The Life and Times of Loose Ends

 

Loose Ends attacking Attorneyman, 2 x 3  inches,  pen and ink, digital color, 1992

Loose Ends for New York Law Journal, 5 x 4 inches, pen and ink, digital color, 1994

Loose Ends,  40 x 36 inches, acrylic paint on linen, 2013

I HAVE CHARACTERS IN MY COTERIE
of figments of my imagination that keep re-appearing  in my work. You can see an example of one such figment and his evolution in the above three works.  This character, Looose Ends, was created for and first appeared in Attorneyman, a weekly comic strip I illustrated and wrote for Skadden News and Notes in the early 1990's.  He was a supervillain who created loose ends everywhere he went.

Subsequently, the New York Law Journal gave me an assignment to illustrate an article regarding a  problem law firms were having at the time–Alcohol in the Workplace. The art director gave me my politically correct marching orders, which were that I was not to have any liquor bottles, alcoholic beverage glasses or slumped bodies in my drawing. I thought to myself,  "Why don't you just tie my hands behind my back?" However, I accepted the challenge and got to work.

Loose Ends was my man for the job. He passed all of NYLJ's requirements for the drawing. A lawyer trying to write a brief under the influence would certainly create many loose ends; the waving streamers visually suggest the whirling of a mind inebriated.  To drive the point home, I drew a wilting, curled pencil.

Loose Ends went on to be an advertisement for Quo Vadis, a NYC paper company. The caption was, "If only I'd used a Quo Vadis planner, I wouldn't have so many Loose Ends!"  This ad was noticed by the French blog J ai Rendezvous Avec Ma Vie, which featured  Loose Ends and more of my art in a post.  I don't know exactly what they wrote because I don't read French, but Loose Ends looks the same in French as he does in English.

Today, Loose Ends is all grown up. He is larger and more colorful as a painting, and currently making the rounds at NYC galleries. He still has the streamers but today two birds are tangled in them and flying off with them. Eccentrically dressed, he sports a dragon fly as his tie. His ancient eyes have fallen out of his head into a nest he carries around on his lap for just such emergencies. Indeed, today he shines with the densely layered patina of a highly traveled, well worn old drawing who has had a good life.

I  still care for him, in a nostalgic sort of way, but  Loose Ends is a thing of the past. I don't have any currently, and I hope you don't either.

Ear Count

Nightwings, acrylic on linen, 40 x 36 inches

Sketchbook, precursor to Nightwings, 4 x 3 inches

Vincent van Gogh wound up with only one ear.

Even Picasso had bad days when he produced works that were below his usual standard.  It didn't seem to bother him though,  so he ended his career with both ears intact.  If someone offered you a "bad" Picasso, would you turn it down because it wasn't a "good" one? It's still a "Picasso." He knew that.

The fact is that I came close  to being a one-eared artist myself during many fitful painting sessions   but stopped just short, so I still have two.  Mercifully, my artist's snits manifested themselves by my cutting up the "substandard" drawings or paintings that I was working on, rather than amputating  my ear. However, throwing out one's artwork is almost as bad as dispensing with one's ear.

Don't do either-especially throw out your work, even if you are dissatisfied with it. It is important to see the progression of your work, both technically and  hermeneutically. Not only will you learn from your mistakes, but you will be able to develop a stronger point of view. Also, there is a chance that you will be famous one day, and then everybody will want your "bad" paintings.

Another reason is that you can draw on your "sketchy" beginnings and use your seminal ideas to develop richer, more complex work.  For example, the drawing and painting above were produced years apart. The drawing is a sketch from my journal, made 19 years ago. When viewing it last year, it sparked the idea for a painting in my current series of paintings, Wings. The painting (done 19 years after its precursor ) draws heavily on the sketch, including model, background and mood. I added more color, layering, a dog and a bat. 

The most interesting aspect of the young man's pose is the expressive configuration and placement of his hands, which is why I wanted to sketch him in the first place.  I thought it was visually beautiful. Conceptually, though, his hands look dangerous because I think he might  have been giving a gang hand signal.

 I hope it wasn't the signal for, "Let's cut off the artist's ear."

DNA

Babe and Mac McLaughlin

I WAS WALKING ALONG the beach at Ocean Place with Harrison collecting seashells the other day when out of the blue, he asked, "Your mother's dead, right?"   I replied, "It's sad, but true.  Yes, she's gone to heaven and I miss her very much." He continued along these lines," And your father's dead too, right?," to which I replied that he was in heaven with my mother and I had wonderful memories of both of them.  We walked a little farther, collecting shells in silence.

He then asked, "They were my great grandmother and grandfather, right?"  I told him that was correct.
"Well," he said, "They are not really dead, you know."  When I asked him how he figured that,  he replied, "Because we're alive and we have their DNA."

What a beautiful notion!

We got some beautiful shells  that day too.

Paint on,
Depingo

Wings

 

ICARUS HAD THE RIGHT IDEA about aspiring to fly, but took the wrong approach. This mythical figure thought humans could take flight by constructing artificial wings from feathers and wax. He didn’t realize that the real way to fly is through art, and specifically painting.

I am just starting to fly myself and am absolutely thrilled that my painting Wings (40 x 36) has been accepted into Self: An International Juried Exhibit of Women’s Self-Portraiture displayed in Slippery Rock University’s Martha Gault Art Gallery for February 2014. It is one of 3 images that will be on the show's poster and postcard.

I will be aiming for even higher altitudes and other destinations in 2014 and hope that my latest group of paintings, Wings, will carry me there.

Paint on,

Depingo 

Arrogant Little Piece of Linen

IT  IS GOOD to be back in my favorite studio at Foxglove.  It seems so welcoming. When I walk in, the painting I left unfinished last December screams at me, "Finish me, Finish me!" to which I reply, "You arrogant little piece of linen!"

Granted, my ersatz winter studio was not ideal. It consisted of  a pretzel-like me flopped down on a chaise on our balcony over the Atlantic, balancing my laptop between my pelvis and flexed thighs and supporting my Wacom on the underside of my raised left forearm. In this contorted position I could draw and paint with my right hand, all the while battling high winds off the Atlantic.

Perhaps it was not the most ergonomically sound method of working, but it worked long enough for me to get sixteen paintings done in the four months I was a snowbird. I also composed sixteen poems in that same twisted, gravity-defying manner.  Could it be that this very work style is why I currently have splints and Ace bandages on both my wrists to keep them from painting or doing anything else that requires finger or wrist movement?

Back to the screaming painting.  I couldn't just let it sit there unfinished, so I decided to do the finish work on it with a palette knife. I usually don't use this tool, nor do I really know how. It seemed to me, however, that this would require less exacting finger movement than brushes.

Hello! You can't keep the painter in a painter down. Even wrist splints can 't hold me back. Mr. Depingo even sat on me to stop me. (Those of you who are personally acquainted with Mr. D will understand the severity of this.) Nope, it didn't work! I squirmed out. I'm pretty sure a little palette knife work never hurt anyone.

 Just the same, please don't mention this to my doctor.

Boys Will Be Buoys

 OFT HAPPENS on the summer solstice

On the Isle of Moor,  just off Atlantis

 To cure the boys of colds and bronchitis

 Keeping them well so they can apprentice.

Captain Quack brews the boys blowfish tea

Prescribing sometimes as many as three

 Then sets sail with the lads, "Hard alee!"

(Just sayin,' seems suspicious to me.)

For blowfish puffs up inside your knee

You get laryngitis and top heavy

After the boys get their voices back

  Quack fixes them another snack.

He tells their mothers, "They're sick indeed"

They plead, "Return them!" Says he, "No need

Take head, my treatment is gratis

If you declare me loco parentis."

He knots anchors around the boy's necks

Blimey! Parents look like shipwrecks

As he tosses their children into the drink

All watch as down to the bottom they sink.

First rise the bubbles with a gushing noise

After that, the now buoyant boys

Ships tether to legs which look more like toys

No troubles, no poise, Quack's off to St. Croix's.

  Post Script

Boy ahoy! Boy ahoy!

Hope this tale won't kill your joy

Don't drink blowfish––it'll make you screwy

And if you're a boy, you'll turn into a buoy.

Poached Soul

SHE COLLECTED
The prettiest shells at the shore

Thought, "The sea won't miss those I adore

I need many more to sell in my store"

Poseidon roared, "Stop! I implore!"

'Twas written in nautical lore.

She used to make trinkets and rings galore

Sold  them recklessly; she wasn't poor

Got locked in a shell–spit up on the shore
For another collector to pick up off the floor.

'Twas written in nautical lore.

Laughing, she sticks her head out the conch

Upon her paunch she hides her tranche

Skin's the color of poached soul–or a blanch

For eternity she's lost her panache.

Probably end up as somebody's cache.

How The Mollusk Got Its Stripes

A HAUGHTY HIGH-HATTED ROYAL named La La

Rode on the beach calling, "Ta ta, ta ta"

Her prosaic pale-yellow mollusk carriage

'Twas a vehicle which I have to disparage.

Though powered  by zebra

Of stripes that would please ya

This lack-luster shell did not ring my bell

A visual fact that made La La unwell.

She stopped at El Mar

Where the azure spread far

To water her zebras

Dried out from their seizures.

A flock of magpies fond of her hat

Nested in there and that was that

One of them pecked at La La's cranium

Out came her brainium, hue of geranium.

It flowed down her arm right onto the mollusk

The stream was robust; she lamented, "Tsk, tusk"

Startled, the zebras reared up and down

 Imprinting stripes on the shell all around.

Now the ride of the Queen of Zebras

Outshines that of the Queen of Sheba's

La La's mind is now vacant; but I've no gripes–

Small price to pay for the mollusk's stripes.

Mc Laughs

If you hold it to your ear, you can hear the subway.

McLaughs

Jeeze! We forgot the kids!

Darwinian Repurposing

DARWIN repurposed the horseshoe crab

Far better than Post-its, tray or tab

He classified the crab as Nelson

And stacked his research on Nelson's telson

A desk accessory may seem a bit drab

But it's far better than being a crab.

Then he designed a canine shredder

Pieces of paper never seemed deader

The wind took this occasion to play

Before blowing the confetti away.

Tired after his doubleheader,

Darwin took the dog home and fed her.

If you must work August through July

Do grab a crab so you won't have to cry

Through Darwinian brilliance it's not out of reach

to set up your office and work at the beach.

Darwinian repurposing -- don't be shy

Next on your list, repurpose your guy!

An Octopus Lives in the Sea

AN OCTOPUS  lives in the sea

Along with you and me

Tentacles and limbs forever entwined

In perpetuity they'll never unwind.

And the ocean just keeps rolling in.

The octopus severs a diver's line

What does it matter, your line or mine?

Or should we fall from a fiscal cliff

Financially adrift? Might  happen. What if?

And the ocean just keeps rolling in.

The years pass by with truths and lies

A day, a month, a year–time flies

We hold this life of ours so dear

To celebrate! a tear? a cheer?

And the ocean just keeps  rolling in.

Happy New Year to all of Depingo's readers

Paint on,

Depingo

And the ocean just keeps rolling in
And the ocean just keeps rolling in
And the ocean just keeps rolling in
And the ocean just keeps rolling in.

and that's what I like about the ocean

Dear Santa,

A

ll

I  Want

F O r

Christmas

 This  Year  is  

Peace on Earth

Good Will toward All.
 Leave It under this Newtown Norway 

Spruce and I will see that everyOne

GETS A

SHARE

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good life,

Depingo

 

Vent, Vent, Vent

TWENTY-SIX ANGELS–gone

In a better place

A tragedy we all have to face

Shot by a demon who fell from grace

And all I can do is pace, pace, pace.

But the littlest angels are the most potent

With their store of energy as yet unspent,

Led by heroic angels when they went,

Only to return–heaven sent, sent sent.

In the stars, and the sky, I see each face

Twenty-six are gone but not without trace

Their spirit remains to save this place

All we can do?–embrace, embrace embrace.

The Energizer Bunny School of Art

Harrison at Foxglove

LIKE THE AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST, MARY CASSATT, who often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children, and Sally Mann, one of my favorite photographers, I am content to spend a great deal of time painting family members and family life, past and present.

It is not always easy for me to get family members to sit still long enough for me to see what they really look like. So I have to paint them from memory and photographs and catch the occasional ephemeral real life glimpse when I can. The difficulty is to to capture their spirit as well as their physical attributes, bringing out their intangibles such as character and mood. But I do have an advantage, because I know them intimately.

 Cassatt's Sailor Boy

It wasn't easy for the painter Mary Cassatt, who had to leave America and go to Paris to learn to paint. She felt she was not learning anything in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, because she, as a woman, was not allowed to draw from live models. Women at the time were restricted to drawing from plaster casts. She said there was no teaching there and she also tired of the ridicule from the men in the program.

Sally Mann was actually accused (ridiculously so) of creating kiddy porn when she published Immediate Family, a book of black and white photographs of her three children taken at a remote spot where they could skinny dip and generally run wild.

Mann's  Family

I, too, have had my share of disrespect and discrimination from the not-so-fair sex while working as a painter. Once when I was bringing my portfolio around, the male gallery owner wondered out loud why I was showing him my paintings. He asked, "What! Is your husband out of town on business this week and you need something to do?" At another gallery on a first visit, a male gallerist, whom I did not know, asked me if I would make him a cup of coffee. I did, because I really wanted to get into that gallery. In retrospect, I wish I had served it by pouring it on his head.

We women artists are pluckier than we seem. Like the Energizer Bunny, we just keep on ticking. Tick, tick, tick. Our lives, our families and our art go on ticking too. Besides, we simply won't let ourselves get ticked off.

Paint on,

Depingo

See more  Depingo family portraits by clicking here:

Alice's Aura
Painting in the Deep End of the Gene Pool

It would be foxy if you'd buy my book,

Depingo Ergo Sum!

Mr. Pluck vs. Sandy

Sandy,

IT'S ALMOST TIME 

To rock and roll!

Like Mr Pluck

We've got luck

Besides, you suck.

So rain your heart out

Let your winds wail

For it  will be

To no avail.

The East Coast will prevail.

Stay safe everyone!

Ode to the Working Woman

Put up coffee

Feed the cats

Scramble eggs

And wake the brats.

Clothes to cleaner

Kids to school

Kiss the boyfriend

Now stay cool.

Type and file

Fetch and phone

Write some prose

You're all alone.

Forget the fun

Fun? 

What's that?

Remember Hon?

You used to sing

And dance and paint

Now you work 

Until you faint.

Out to market

Buy the food

Are you cross?

Watch your mood!

Toss the salad

There's the phone

He's not coming

All alone.

Pack the kids

In the sack

Were you charming?

He'll call back.

Scrubbing floors

And vacuuming

Could that have been

The doorbell ring?

Start your freelance

Hand wash lace pants

Here he is

No more Ms.

Feeling, sharing

Almost caring

It's so late

Don't be rude.

It's your fate

Play an etude

Be enchanting

Now he's panting.

You're so tired

You're a wreck

You'll be fired

What the heck.

You're the working woman!

One Stilletto

She's got soul. He's a heel.

Made in Heaven blurred sex and art

Jeff Koons' wife got the part of the tart

He thought, "in flagrante delicto - perfecto!"
 I'd rather see them dining alfresco

And would rate it only:  *One Stiletto*

His porn-star wife soon split and he let her

A puppy of flowers would be so much better

 Complete with irrigation system to wet her!

(Cicciolina now makes him shudder
He wishes he never met her.)

Extremely fond of appropriation

Koons used the banal for his kitschy creation

Got sued for recycling but throughout the strife

Festooned the world with his in-your-face trife

Borrowing from low cultural life.

Koons hired goons to make his cartoons

Sold them for millions to Philistine tycoons

The factory approach I'm told really sold

His balloons never pop and they're hard to hold

For the price, they should be made of gold.