The Cedar Tavern

Was it the Cedar Tavern where all the big art guns used to go and get drunk?

Anyway, I had a Cedar Tavern moment a year or two ago when I was asked to come up with an antiwar/anti-George Bush painting for a group show called "Why W?". I told them I'd do it, but since my original idea had been rejected due to space constraints (I had wanted to do a life-size homage to Guernica with a picture of George W on the left side, where the woman with the dead baby would be in the original, holding a car battery, the wires of which were attached to a prisoner of war--if that's the right term--standing on the right side, but apparently they didn't have the space), I was having trouble coming up with anything compelling.

So I was sitting in a bar with my friend Eric, having had perhaps a bit too much to drink, complaining that I had to come up with something pretty damned soon, when sure enough, after just one more Bass Ale, I came up with the idea of curling my hand up in a ball, then painting it with a caricature of George W, looking shifty, integrated into the image. Kind of a Senior Wences thing, if that's meaningful to you.

It came out looking like this.



Which shows you that great thinking can emerge from a liquor-soaked brain.