Next painting

I'm torn between two possible next subjects. First, since I'm in the South, I thought I might take a stab at a series of Civil War generals. This would of course be The General Lee:



An alternative version might of course be:



I'm reading "The Killer Angels" by Michael Schaara, so I'm pretty fired up about Old Bobby Lee, as they like to call him in the book.

The other thought is to continue my Wall Street series with a picture of Maria Bartiromo. There's a publicity photo of Calista Flockhart that makes me laugh...




I thought I could cement Bartiromo's face on Calista's body in some bizarre Pollock/Photoshop fusion and see what I come up with.

I also remain drawn, in spite of suggestions from my friend Earl, to the idea of scrawling stuff on my paintings of the Wall Street people. And, in fact, I am considering taking the scrawl and running it around the entire perimeter of the painting.

Which is an interesting idea--to me, at least. I use irridescent gold paint straight from the tube to write the stuff and it is fun how it catches the light sometimes. NOTE: this is a phenomenon that can only be appreciated in person. The irridescence remains elusive in the face of my meager photographic talents. But in person it's cool.

So the idea is to take a somewhat longer title, which of course would be:

Big Maria I (Jet Too Many): A Portrait of Wall Street Starlet Maria Bartiromo, who's Mile-high Dalliance Cost CitiGroup Exec Todd Thompson his Job..."

Surely that's going to be long enough to stretch around all four sides of the painting. If not, I can add copy.

But the idea is to create what will, in essence, be a gilt frame around the image.

The obvious joke would be: Surely there's enough gilt to go around.

And also in the running, while we're on the subject of business, is my Steve Jobs/penis head idea. See below for clarification.