"Tujaque's Sazeracs"

Oil on linen mounted on panel - 6" x 8"

In honor of Mardi Gras, I have painted the bartender at Tujaque's Restaurant on Decatur Street in New Orleans mixing up one of the Big Easy's most famous cocktails - the Sazerac. Made with rye whiskey, bitters and absinthe, it is an acquired taste. I just happen to have the ingredients on my bar so I may just have to make myself one. Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Sazerac cocktail:

• 1 cube or 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 4 dashes Peychaud Bitters
• Splash water, about 1/2 teaspoon
• 2 ounces rye whiskey
• Splash Herbsaint (or Pernod), about 1/2 teaspoon
• Lemon peel for garnish
• Ice

Tools of the Trade - Diana Moses Botkin's Art Challenge - February 2012

"Tools of the trade - Bartender"
Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel - 6" x 8"

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am flattered to have been asked to join the Diana Moses Botkin's Art Challenge Group. The February subject was "tools of the trade." Since it need not have been one's own trade, I choose the tools of a profession I very much admire. Having the proud distinction of having a cocktail named after me at The Dogwood, one of Baltimore's best restaurants, I have had occasion to see these tools put to good use. The drink is the "Mark Adams" martini:

Mark Adams $11
spicy and dirty: Serrano pepper-infused
vodka, shaken and served up and dirty, garnished
with olives and pickled okra (not for
the faint of heart)

Also, as a Harley guy, I am partial to chrome. There is a biker saying (which I don't subscribe to): "Chrome won't get you home!" After a few of these a cab will get you home.

Here are my fellow challenge artist works for February:

"A Painter's Handful" 10"x8" oil

©2012Mary Maxam



Barber's Tools

6"x 8" oil on hardboard
©2012 Diana Moses Botkin

"Paints" 6"x6" oil
©2012 Becky Joy



"Bluebird En Plein Air"

oil on panel, 4x4"

©Vicki Ross




"Tool of the Trade"

Oil on canvas
10"x30"
©2012 Suzanne Berry

"Mardi Gras Bloody Mary"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 8" x 10"

And now for something completely different!

Something that one sees around Jackson Square in New Orleans is a form of naive folk art using familiar icons of the area. Often done with ordinary house paint on found planks of wood or shingles, these colorful objet d'art are cheerful and amusing. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at one using a subject that is near and dear to me - Tabasco. I probably have over 100 bottles of hot sauce of various stripe in the pantry and in the fridge (much to my wife's chagrin) but the one that gets utilized the most is the ubiquitous Tabasco. Nothing else tastes like it. I dare say you could make a Bloody Mary with Jamaica Hell Fire Sauce but it wouldn't be the same. I further embraced the New Orleans theme by using purple, green and gold - the colors of Mardi Gras, to really sink it home. I thought the black outline gave the painting a clumsy folksiness. I told you I was going to have fun.

" A glass of red wine"

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

"Vodka Martini with Three Olives"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 6" x 8"

Scotch whiskey and I are old friends. We go back years and years and I still like a wee dram in the evening, after I have put the brushes down, of course, and am reflecting on the day. The peatier the better. I could easily retire to Islay and drink Laphroaig when I'm near the end. Lately however, I have embraced the dirty, spicy vodka martini as my drink of choice. Last year dear friends of mine gave me a bottle of home infused pepper vodka. They are master gardeners and pepper heads and grow some very interesting and uncommon varieties of hot peppers like "Biker Billies" and "Chocolate habaneros." Let's just say the stuff would put hair on your chest. It was not for the faint of heart but right up my alley. This year they gave me a bag of assorted capsicums and I took them to Lars, my favorite mixologist at the Dogwood restaurant in Baltimore to infuse with one of his organic Vodkas. He keeps it behind the bar for me to have with my short rib meatloaf special on Thursdays. I doubt mere mortals could touch the stuff. It really is wonderful in a dirty martini. This is one of Lars' concoctions.

"Gimlet"

Oil on museum quality, archival ampersand gessobord™ panel - 6” x 8”

I can't drink a gin gimlet without thinking of Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings," a clever spoof of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" - -

"Gimlet, son of Groin, your obedient servant," said the dwarf, bowing to reveal a hunchback. "May you always buy cheap and sell dear."

"Frito, son of Dildo, yours," said Frito in some confusion, racking his brains for the correct reply. "May your hemorroids shrink without surgery."

The dwarf looked puzzled but not displeased. "Then you are the boggie of whom Goodgulf spoke, the Ringer?"

Frito nodded.

"Do you have it with you?"

"Would you like to see it?" asked Frito politely.

"Oh no thanks," said Gimlet, "I had an uncle who had a magic tieclip and one time he sneezed and his nose fell off."

Frito nervously touched a nostril...

  Tolkien's dwarf character Gimli, son of Gloin becomes Gimlet, son of Groin. Bilbo becomes Dildo; Frodo, Frito;  Aragorn, Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, and so on.  Their quest is to cast the ring into the Zazu Pitts.  It is an amusing read for hardcore Tolkien fans such as me.   My daughter's middle name is Lórien, that tells you something.  I sent her birth certificate back because they hadn't put the accent over the ó.  Holly will be 35 this year, so you see how long I've been a fan.  She's fortunate that she was was not stuck with Galadriel as her first name; cooler heads prevailed back in '73.  Luckier still, that we didn't have a son.  I shutter to think what young Frodo would be up to today, other than hating his dad for saddling him with such a goofy appellation.

Since I had been wrestling with this painting for a while, I decided to celebrate its completion by shaking up a restorative gin/lime concoction to drink while I wrote this copy.  The bracing astringency of the cocktail is as refreshing at 2:00 am as the rose' was at dinner earlier this week.   This piece had its share of hoops to jump through (pun intended).  The perfect oval in paint can look contrived and any variance from that perfection looks wrong, even if it is just slightly off true.  So how did I solve this conundrum?   The only option was to stay loose and free and go with the flow.  It is PAINT after all.  If I wanted a photo of a gimlet, a could have grabbed my Nikon instead of my brush.  If ellipsis means to leave out - tomorrow's painting will have an ellipsis of ellipses, I promise you. Calligraphy has always been my nemesis.  Indeed, my everyday handwriting is so illegible that you'd have to take a hastily written note to the local pharmacist to have it deciphered.  Forkner shorthand ruined me.  Thank you, Mrs. Falco.

“A Glass of Rosé"

Oil on museum quality, archival ampersand gessobord™ panel - 6” x 8”

Summer is finally here and once again it is socially permissible to drink rosé.  Like not wearing white shoes after labor day, etiquette dictates that we wait until warm weather to enjoy rosé.  I’m not talking about the stuff we that we cut our teeth on back in college either - Mateus, Lancer's, et al., that cloyingly sweet pink wine that we all thought was the perfect drink, whatever the season.  Come on, admit it, you had a drip candle in a Mateus bottle on your wire spool table in your first apartment.  I can almost hear “Stairway to Heaven” playing on the phonograph and  smell the mixed aroma of incense and pot.  Times have changed, we’ve matured (well, some of us) and thank God, so have our palates (and our palettes). I suppose white zin has its place, but give me a lovely French rosé on a hot summer evening and I am a happy guy.  Now where did I put my white bucks?

“And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven”

Sails, sales, soldes

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Oil on museum quality, archival 1/8" ampersand gessobord panel - 6" x 6"

I set sail on this daily painting odyssey almost 4 months ago and though life sometimes intruded into this adventure, a lot of creativity happened along the way, both process and product. As I trimmed my canvas and picked up speed, I started gathering faithful devotees to the site who anxiously awaited my latest work of art. What a wonderful thing to have art groupies. The downside of this is that I hate to disappoint them on days when it doesn’t flow from the hand or I am working on larger projects. Months before I was accepted into the daily painters, I painted some fun things, many of which have left the building. Those that remained had no more audience than my friends and the occasional visitor to the studio. On the days that I am working on a commission, a larger piece for a show, or just plain don’t get one done; I am going to repost these orphans for my daily painter patrons to more easily view. I promise not to abuse this. There are only a handful of these lonely panels left in the studio. Shamed to be left behind, the last picked for the volley ball team in gym class, they long to find a wall to call their own and to hang with their own kind. I am going to put these waifs on eBay to try and find them a loving home.

I can’t believe I used a sailing metaphor to begin this entrée, everyone knows I loath sailing. Perhaps it was having a “sale” of my remaining panels that put it in my head. My wife and I found ourselves in Paris a few years ago in January. Why would anyone go to Paris in January when April and May are available? We were there celebrating my friends 50th birthday. Unbeknownst to us, Janvier is the month when the stores all have their winter sales. As we strolled through the Odeon, window shopping, we thought it odd that shops would put merchandise in the windows that was already sold. We eventually figured out that “solde” is French for “sale” and not some cruel, perverse joke played on the consumer as a reminder to shop early.

It’s “neat” that I didn’t use puns like; my hopes were dashed “on the rocks” or that I was “smokin’” – I thought about it.

By way of a long voyage, with the wind at my back, I give you once again – “Boston Legal” (November 2007 blog entry)

"Drink Naked"

Oil on archival, museum quality 1/8" ampersand gessobord panel - 6" x 6"

I seem to be bouncing back and forth between reflective chrome and fuzzy puppies. What can I say? I love painting diverse textures and want to keep it fresh. Next up – cold and slimy; by that I mean fish or oysters.

We went to visit the Naked Mountain Vineyards and Winery in Markham, Virginia last year. They make extremely good wine and we bought a case of their excellent Chardonnay. I might have gotten a case even if the wine was just so-so because of the corks. When you open the wine, the cork reads “Drink Naked”. That appeals to my decadent sensibilities. Indeed, I picked up a tee shirt at the winery with that slogan on it. I get a lot of smiles from people when I am wearing this shirt. Once, Forgetting I had it on, I went to take some mail to a friend in rehab. I got some real dirty looks from the counselors…oops, my bad?

These tools of the trade were fun to paint.

Bombay Sapphire martinis

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Oil on archival, museum quality 1/8" gessobord panel - 5" x 7"

I don’t know whether I am feeling particularly patriotic today or if I am caught up in the red state / blue state political rivalries that are dividing our country, but the red, white and blue palette of this piece can’t be denied. Since I am an independent, moderate, it is a good thing that purple is my favorite color. Certainly 2008 is going to be an interesting year that may require more than one of these martinis before it’s over. I am a scotch man myself although I wouldn’t turn down a good dry martini. "Here's looking at you, kid."

I was hesitant to try this composition on a bright red tablecloth as I thought that the subtleties of the pale aqua tones of the gin would be lost. To my surprise, the bottle took on a deep cobalt/ultramarine hue. Painting the Harley last week only whetted my appetite for more chrome, so the cocktail shaker was a good fit. My biker brothers say “chrome won’t get you home” but I am a sucker for the stuff. Now where did I put my shades?

“What a difference a [frame] makes…”

Since I didn’t finish yesterday's painting for various reasons and excuses (and I know all of them), I thought I would show you how to elevate these little panels to small wonders. My last day job was back in 1974. I worked at the venerable Purnell Art Company as a framing craftsman and restorer. I have a lot of respect for the art of framing and it is an art. The reason we frame 2-dimensional works of art is because without containing the image, the lines and colors would visually drift off into space. Perhaps lattice strips would suffice, but a well made frame that complements the work adds to the charm and grace of the artwork. A case it point: The Baltimore Museum of Art is home to the Cone Collection, works by Picasso, Braque and that early 20th century gang of modern masters. The paintings were framed in the big Victorian frames popular in the day. When a new director of the BMA came onboard, she thought it would be a good idea to take off the grand Victorian frames put on by Gertrude Stein and the Cone sisters and put them into something that she thought would have pleased the modern artist’s sensibilities – little gold stripping. It was awful!! The hue and cry that followed the unveiling of the collection can still be heard. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. The old frames, mercifully, carefully retained, were restored and the director has moved on to ruin things elsewhere. I myself am a proclaimed frame fetishist and tend to over frame the work I live with. It is not uncommon for me to spend many times the value of the art on a great frame. Here in Baltimore we have the Fleckenstein Gallery. Terry really knows her stuff and offers some drop-dead gorgeous molding. Today’s painting which I posted in December demonstrates just how much a frame works to enhance a painting. The frame you see has a depth of an inch and a half with beautiful mahogany sides. Go ahead; spend the money on a good frame. You will thank me.