SPIKVS AVRELIVS

Ahhhhh... After a long rough patch, Spikus Aurelius is finished. This would be it, festooning the wall of my studio. Clear eyed observers will notice the photograph in the upper left corner of the picture of the person hereafter referred to as Stephanie C.--my next subject.



Because Lawrence (Spike) is a new-age guy, I thought it would be fun to just scrawl the words "SPIKVS AVRELIVS" across his chest. Turned out pretty well, at least in one man's opinion.



That said; a moment, if I may, on the subject of cowardice. I didn't know Picasso personally, but if I were to pinpoint one difference between him and me, my bet is that as he got near the end of a painting he felt stronger, protean (as they like to say), god-like, invincible. Ergo, he'd just finish the damned thing and move on.

Me? When I get close to the end I quake at the thought that the next thing I do will ruin the whole fucking thing. This can perhaps be forgiven of one who throws the paint of the end of his stick--an imprecise gesture at a time when precision is important--but still...

So you can imagine my anxiety as I grabbed a tube of antique gold and scrawled the painting's title across Spike's chest.

No. On second thought, actually you can't. But all's well that ends well, and it turned out pretty well, at least in one man's opinion.

This, I will offer in closing, is just the face:



If I erased this damned thing once, I erased it a hundred times. Finally I got the nose right, then the eyes followed (use of the word "followed" here makes it sound easy, which was not the case.). The mouth was its own set of issues, but they too resolved themselves. And all the while I was buttressed by the spirit of Winslow Homer, whispering in my ear, saying: "It's okay to erase. Go ahead, do it again... No one will know unless you tell them."

This from him? Anyway, it is instructive, I suppose, to compare the final face with previous versions shown in earlier post entitled "Spikus Interruptus".