These are four recently completed paintings. And they're fairly good examples of the diversity of my source material. I'm not the kind of guy likely to paint a stoic still-life. Or an abstract color-idea explosion. And God knows I loathe conceptual art...Y'know, like a box of ribbons on the floor or knotted ropes hanging in a doorway.

My art is a fairly extrinsic exercise.

Sometimes a painting is an expression of long-simmering rage or outrage. Or the recreation of a panel from an ancient comic strip. Or inspired by a woman who's got my eye. Or a creepy idea that pops -- full-blown -- into my head.

These four, painted simultaneously, come from divergent origins.

This image was originally an illustration for the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday magazine section back in the early 70s. This is fairly tame subject matter for me, but I've always liked this image. So with minor changes I made it into a painting nearly 40 years later.

 
"Artistic Comics" 2009 Acrylic on canvas. 36" x 48"

This was a drawing that lived in my sketchbook since the early 70s. The figures are based on characters from the "Buster Brown" Sunday comics newspaper strip from early in the 20th century.

On the internet I found a photograph taken in a whorehouse circa the 1920s or 1930s. I liked the body language of the prostitute and her trick. She seems resigned to her lot in life. He's happy to be gettin' some. I did a sketch based on the photograph. So now it's a colorful painting based on my black and white sketch, based on a monochromatic tintype.

I created the somewhat auto-biographical character, Snappy Sammy Smoot back in 1967. He's had (like I) many harrowing adventures over the years. Most of the time these days he's been relegated to a role as an occasional icon in some of my paintings. I've painted several versions of this image in recent years -- in different sizes and each rendered in different media with different titles.