Diego Rivera was the husband of Frida Kahlo. He was a Mexican painter who was renown for his murals which depicted the working class. They are quite spectacular to say the least. At a certain point in his career, he went down a rabbit hole of making cubist paintings. Thankfully that didn’t last too long. I’m not sure if he got much praise for his landscapes but they are loving tributes to the beauty of his home country. Plus, he was visually wild looking himself.
O'Keefe
Another great American painter was O’Keefe. I loved doing this drawing because she resembles my grandmother. The irish influence. Her life is the stuff of art fantasy. Discovered young. Then instant success in New York City but the fantasy part was her moving to New Mexico and living in the midst of incredible beauty in her own adobe studio under the stars. The environment became her work and she morphed back into the environment. Plus, the environment had a cool name, Ghost Ranch. Lastly, she did the thing I really desire. She developed an outfit to wear each day. A look. Most days I wear my blue zip up coveralls, but it pales in comparison to her groovy outfit.
Andrew Wyeth
Another of America's greatest painters ever was Andrew Wyeth. There is a brilliant documentary about his life on PBS. It’s part of their American Masters series, titled, Wyeth. You can watch it on Amazon Prime too. After seeing this, I wouldn’t blame any artist putting down their brushes for a long hiatus. You’ll be left dumbstruck that one person could be so astoundingly prodigious for so many decades. Watching it made me feel wonderfully insignificant. So, I did this little Mad Magazine cartoon of him as a thank you.
John Singer Sargent
One of the greatest painters of all time is John Singer Sargent. Whenever I’m in a museum anywhere in the world, I always looks for the Sargents. Without fail, I usually find 10 to 12 in any given museum. I can always spot them, even from a great distance. The thing is, I had no clue what he looked like, as I’m sure most people don’t. So here he is making his debut on Instagram. Handsome bugger.
Spring
Springtime projects.
Bunny Girl
A Tommy Kane portrait is always a missed opportunity in getting proportions correct. That problem seems to be his strength.
End Of Fish
According to Wikipedia, the total number of fishing vessels in the world is now about 4.6 million. That is an awful lot of very effective ships vacuuming up every living thing for miles around their perimeters on a daily basis. About 20 to 30% of the global catch is done by illegal and unregulated fishing boats. With about 2.5 trillion fish caught globally each year, they don’t stand a chance against our efficiently. I’m not sure proving we can catch everything in the ocean is anything to celebrate. Greenpeace estimates that every year, more than 640,000 tons of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are dumped and discarded in the sea. 6% of all nets used, 9% of all traps and 29% of all longlines (fishing lines that are several miles long) remain as physical pollution dumped at sea. It took me a while to figure out that mankind is trying to replace all the living creatures of the ocean with plastic trash. Victory will soon be at hand. I wonder what kind of fish will be the last one standing.
Spring
My annual spring drawing. There are a few flowers in Brooklyn.
Seaspiracy
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll empty the oceans by 2050 and we’ll all die.
You should teach a man to cook lentils.
Conspiracy
The documentary, Cowspiracy, is the reason I became vegan five and a half years ago. You can give it a viewing on Netflix or Amazon Prime. A life changer.
Squirrel
My newest squirrel logo.
Chimpclop
Animals have a keen instinct and are under no illusions that we are doing everything to push them all to extinction. Unfortunately, slowly but surely we are succeeding. Even Chimpanzees, who humans love to dress up just like people, are under stress for survival. I guess the pandemic has made us feel like we are just trying to survive too. I would have to say that I’m not much help at all. In fact, I’m useless. The only thing I do is write dumb snippets and post them to the instaweb to make myself feel bad.
Deer Fish
When we do damage to the land, then that in turn reeks havoc on our oceans. That’s because the sea bone is connected to the land bone.
