Classic Post--November 13, 2006

I thought this might be a fun time for a classic post. I've chosen "On Deck..." from November 13th, 2006. The reason? I was running through the early part of The Year of Magical Painting and noticed that this post marks the first time, as near as I can tell, that I ever broached the idea of painting somebody from Wall Street.

Wow.

Scrawl down to the bottom to see what the actual Grasso portrait ended up looking like.

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On Deck...

On deck--Dick Grasso.



For those of you not in the financial uproar loop, Dick Grasso (former head of the New York Stock Exchange) has recently been asked by Now-Gov-Formerly-Attorney-General Elliot Spitzer to give back 100 million bucks from his retirement package.

Grasso resists.

Hi-jinks will, no doubt, ensue.

Depending on which side of the ethical fence you stand, Grasso's either a crook of the first magnitude (actually I take that back--let's call it 2nd magnitude and reserve first class status for people like Kenneth Lay or George W. Bush) or a folk hero.

Either way...look at that face and tell me he won't make an interesting picture.

Here he is in black and white--the image from which I will actually make the painting.



I mean, really! Double click on this image and look at the lines around those eyes; the downturn of the mouth; the way his whole head seems to emerge organically from the point right above the knot in his tie, expanding, filling with air, reminding one, surely, of those balloons in the Macy's Day Parade.

I could paint this same imaqe at least five different ways. Maybe ten.

I'm all fired up. Crikeys...I'm turning into Andy Warhol!

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And this is what came out of all that thinking: