" A glass of red wine"

Oil on cradled museum quality ampersand gessobord panel - 9" x 12"

"Mark Spitz corkscrew"

Oil on archival museum quality 1/8" gessobord panel - 5" x 5"

This is the companion piece to the painting (Haut Medoc-1997) that I did in December. The ubiquitous Mark Spitz corkscrew has been around for quite a while. We all have one tucked away in a draw somewhere. Though not my favorite device for the extraction of a cork from a lovely bottle of Bordeaux, it is always there as a reliable backup when the Cépage Laguiole corkscrew goes missing, as it is wont to do, buried under the myriad of saved corks in the drawer where it resides. Why Mark Spitz you ask? Those of us old enough to remember Mark Spitz capturing a record seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics also remember just before we opened that bottle of Mateus Rosé or Lancers, we would hold the chrome corkscrew horizontally, pull in and out on the screw end, the levers swimming wildly through the air and ask with a giddy laugh “Hey guys, who’s this?" ...I guess you had to be there.