And just while we're beating this to death...volume two

Here, as a public service, is the full expanse of my reinterpretations of Chuck Close's self-portraits: They are, in order, "Close, But Not Quite" and "Close, But No Cigar."





Both, by the way, are five by six.

"Close, But Not Quite" was painted sometime in the 2002-2003 range (I could find out exactly when if you needed to know) and was one of those painting moments when I said to myself something like: "Holy shit, this might actually work!"

I love its profound formality.

Manomanoman... you look at the differences between these two paintings and it just speaks volumes about the evolution/devolution*** of my painting. Check out the similarity of the nostrils.

Spo'oky.

***The use of the slash here is meant to suggest the existence of both processes at the same time, in the same place--exact opposites, marching in lockstep. Hitler and Gandhi. Frasier and Ali. A pretty scary thought, until one reflects on Picasso's famous "I've spent my whole life learning how to paint like a child" line--assuming he even said such a thing--and then it seems kind of soothing in a complicated sort of way. Did he even speak English?