The Month of Mystical Painting

Tomorrow begins the winter painting season. Which means, by and large, no more large annotated paintings of wrinkled white guys. I'd post a resource photo for one in the series of nudes I have planned, but I want to check with the subject before plastering shots of her headless body all over the internet.

In the meantime, suffice to say, painting nudes is a vastly different experience than painting portraits. More mystical, if you will.

There's a natural mystic blowing through the air;
If you listen carefully now you will hear.

I like how, because Bob Marley is Jamaican, he pronounces "air" like "ear"--and the rhyme works.

Ahhh, Thanksgiving, Volume 2

Ahhhh, Thanksgiving.

I'm going to the Peter McManus Cafe today to watch the New York Giants play some collection of like-minded souls. For this I give thanks.

What do you mean by "this?"
Well, I guess I like the idea of standing in a bar, surrounded by friends, watching football.
Okay...
And I suppose one could give thanks more specifically for the general excellence of the Giants.
Yes, I suppose you could.
I mean, watching the Giants over the last 12 months must have been a bit like being a Lakers fan during the Magic days, or the Suns with Steve Nash, or the New Jersey Nets, if you can believe it, during that time when Jason Kidd stopped beating his wife and started passing the ball to Richard Jefferson and Kenyon Martin.
I know what you're going to say next.
You do?
Yes.
Does it have something to do with watching Keith Hernandez bat for the Mets?
Yes.
And play first base too?
Yes.
It was a great privilege, wasn't it?
Yes it was.
You sound slightly ambivalent.
You can tell that just from reading?
Yes. Is there something wrong?
My quibble is this: That famous Laker team was a bit too star-stuffed to be analogous to the the current state of the Giants.
Fair enough.

What is available?

Here's the Annotated Series, with sales status and prices:



Sold, November 2007, $5,000



Sold, September 2008, $14,000



Sold, April 2008, price NA



Sold, November 2008, $18,000



Sold, November 2008, $16,200



Available, $22,000



Available, $18,000



Sold, September 2008, $10,000



Sold, November 2008, $25,000



Available, $25,000



Available, $10,000



Available, $22,000



Available, $25,000

Ahhh, Thanksgiving

There is, of course, much to be thankful for. My daughters jump to mind. And then there's this:



Not by a long stretch my finest work, but imagine a world in which David Tyree didn't make that catch and the Giants didn't win the Super Bowl.

Imagine.

The Screaming Pope, Volume 2

This is another screaming pope from Bacon:

It's actually a bit more my style, at least structurally. I mean, you could white out the little bit of background behind his head and shoulders, call it "The Annotated Paulson" and take it onto Wall Street today. Except that it's 35 degrees out, so call it 30 on Wall Street 'cause its always colder there. You try standing in 30 degree weather handing out markers for three hours.

Anyway, the question comes up during a recent negotiation about my plans to paint additional pictures of, say, Henry Paulson. Even, further to the point, my inclination to title them "The Screaming Pope."

The answer is that I wouldn't. Title them "The Screaming Pope" that is. I'm certainly going to repaint some of these guys, and I'm certainly going to get those paintings annotated. But the point of the exercise is that once a painting is "closed" for annotations, that's it. It exists in its own little historical bubble. And to reinforce the notion, I'll call the next one "The Screaming Pope 2."

Just for clarity.

Exactly.

You've already set the precedent with your McCain One and Two and your Obama One and Two.

Exactly.

And they, both visually and content wise, couldn't be more different paintings.

Nicely said.

I can't wait for your third Obama.

Me neither. But it's a ways away.

I'll remain calm, then.

Please.

The buyer of Pope 1 has asked me to provide a letter of provenance to confirm that it was this painting that stood outside the NYSE at such and such a day, etc. I am happy to do so.

Two developments

Two pleasing developments:

First, somebody emails me asking: "Could you do a portrait of my wife?" This is a notion I dearly love for several reasons:

a) I love doing commissions of regular people
b) I'm so sick of painting wrinkled old men, manomanoman you don't know
c) It fits nicely into my strategy of reinterpreting Andy Warhol's career model to suite my own devices.

Who wouldn't want a six by five portrait of a loved one that looks like this?



(Hey Michelle, haven't talked to you in like a year. Hope you are well.)

The second nice thing is that a couple are coming by the studio with the express purpose of staring at my Obama paintings. In the heat of the Wall Street uproar of the last six months I feel like my political stuff has been unjustly overlooked. I honestly think that the four Obama/McCain paintings are outstanding (McCain 1 and Obama 2 being my two favorites); everything I try to do with my Wall Street work panned out nicely with these four as well. Palin, lets be honest, is a lesser work, although it has its appeal.

I'm thinking about painting a third Obama to complete the series (convention/election/inauguration). Some talk about something happening in DC regarding one or more of these paintings but it is premature to mention beyond what I just mentioned.

Anyway, in a perfect world, the couple coming to the studio today would buy one of the matched O/M sets. I have my doubts--I think they are just thinking Big Barack--but we'll see.

Also, on a separate note, it appears I'll be on 20/20 near the end of the year. They're coming to the studio over the next couple of weeks to shoot me painting Vikram Pandit. I hope Vic is still around by the time the piece airs.

This means to you, dear reader, that you should buy the paintings now. Because post 20/20 the damned things are bumping up from typically $18,000 to typically $25,000. I see Pandit and Greenspan in the low thirties. Email me now to lock in 2008 prices and sidestep this increase.

Suge Knight indicted again

Do you listen to a lot of rap music? I don't, really, although I think rappers would be an excellent potential customer group. "The Annotated Snoop?" "Kanye write something on my painting?" When I was stuck in Leesburg I used to watch "106th and Park" a lot. Which was unbelievable, in the most common usage of that word.

Anyway, if you do listen to the stuff, or follow it in the newspapers (which, back when everybody was shooting everybody else, was pretty interesting), the name Suge Knight invariably pops up. Here's a shot (honk!) of Suge:



My question is this: How do you pronounce his first name? Not Marion, obviously, but Suge. I always assumed it was like shoog, phonetically short for sugar. But then I heard somebody pronounce it soog. So I'm wondering.

Please offer a comment if you know the answer.

This ain't no disco...

Nor is it no Mudd Club, nor C.B.G.B. If the multiple-negatives are decipherable.

This is a detail of one of the photos that appeared in The Times:



People suggest that I should perhaps smile a bit more. These people don't fully recognize that: a) this ain't no time to be smiling, and b) this shit is harder than you think. You try it and we'll see how big a laugh-fest you're having.

The title, of course, refers to this:

LIFE DURING WARTIME

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now

Transmit the message, to the receiver
hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, couple of visas
don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, trucks are loading
everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime
I might not ever get home

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no mudd club, or C. B. G. B.
I ain't got time for that now

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
somebody might see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
to last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers
ain't got no headphones
ain't got no records to play

Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time?
Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard
I can't write nothing at all
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
I'd love you hold you, I'd like to kiss you
I ain't got no time for that now

Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock
we blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines
I know that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives
or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle so many times now
don't know what I look like!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender
we make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving
you ought to get you some sleep
Get you instructions, follow directions
then you should change your address
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day
whatever you think is best
Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace
the burning keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness
don't want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don't take no chances
you better watch what you say

I'll bet that of the millions of people who know the chorus of this song, about zip have every really looked at the rest of the words. Which, I suppose, is a metaphor for the arcane financial instruments that got us into this mess we're in.

This ain't no Mudd Club, my friend.

You can't say "Fuck" in The Times.

Which, I suppose, is reasonable.

That said, they did an extremely nice photo essay on me in yesterday's Sunday Times. Although it's not as good as reading the thing in the paper, you can get a taste of it on the slide show here (I think. If you can't get through, go to nytimes.com and look for a slide show).

Much of what you see is what you've seen already. People standing in front of one of my paintings; other people annotating them. Me, to a less frequent degree, throwing paint. What you don't ever see, really, are the paintings themselves, bereft of annotations.

You can see four of them on the slideshow, and it's a matter about which I have some ambivalence. I mean, it's like they're naked.

The reason for this is that the raunchiness of the annotations on my typical paintings exceeds The Times' standards and practices for naughty shit. So they asked me to send along shots of unannotated paintings (except for Fuld. All I could find was the shot of it with my initial annotation, reading "I am Spartacus.").

Ain't this the way. There's a part of me that looks at some of them and thinks, hmmm--it'll look better after the annotators weigh in. Fuld is like this. Cayne and Bernanke, however, I feel a lot better about, just sitting there in a sea of white canvas. I like both those paintings, period.

I also really like this portrait of me, taken by Times photographer Ruth Fremson:



Portrait of the portraitist. What is this, Hamlet?

The Paintings are getting expensive--Volume 2

The paintings are getting expensive. I just set a new high by selling "The Screaming Pope" to an anonymous buyer in DC for 25,000 clams. Which would be the equivalent of 50,000 valves, assuming that clams are bivalves. Or 16,824 pounds sterling. Stirling?



All that said, you can commission your own painting for $1,800. See the post directly below this one.

Do you think "painting" is the right word in this particular situation?
What do you mean?
You said "commission your own painting." Is it a painting?
Perhaps you are right. I mean, the idea is to generate smaller annotated works...
Works! I like that better.
...Smaller annotated works on paper. Probably twenty-four by thirty.
Pounds sterling?
Inches.
Oh.
And instead of painting, they'll probably be some combination of pen and ink, dripped ink and some paint shmooed around.
Wow. That'll work?
Definitely.
And who annotates them?
Me. My friends submit comments. I get stuff from the Commentariat.
I'll never forget him winning that race by 31 lengths.
That was Secretariat.
Oh.
Anyway, in the end you get an annotated Paulson, or Bernanke, or McCain--whoever you want me to paint, so to speak--for $1800 bucks.
3600 valves.
Exactly. A genuine annotated Raymond for 3600 valves.

The paintings are getting expensive...

"The paintings are getting expensive," my friends say to me. And the way they say it feels a bit accusatory. As if the words "you slimy, money-sucking bastard" would have been appended were they less polite people.

And yes, they are, I suppose, getting expensive. $18,000 is more than most people are willing to pay for art. Or are able. I just got this email:

Dear Geoffrey,
Last week I was able to see your work on TV, but I missed your name and could find nothing on line.
Today you were again mentioned on TV and luckily I was at home where I could rewind the program to get your name.
FINALLY!! I have found a way to reach you.
I am nearly 70 years old, not rich.
I majored in art, then finally became a Jungian analyst.

I love your work!!!
How can I get one?
Please tell me how and I will find a way to pay for it.
It need not be large.

For the record, I'm more of a Freudian guy (Lucian) than a Jungian guy, but I'm not holding that against this lovely soul. And between you and me, I'm gonna set her up just fine.

But it got me thinking. And then it hit me. The big idea. A grande idéia (Portuguese, fyi). It would be this:

You, dear reader, may commission an annotated portrait for $1,800.

You won't get a 4'x5' publicly annotated piece like "The Screaming Pope." What you will get is a work on paper, roughly 18" x 22", suitable for framing (as they might say were this an ad for something like Popeil's Pocket Fisherman). It will be a pen and ink, plus some color, of the subject of your choice (provided I think I can do it justice). It will also annotated. The annotations will be composed by me, a wide circle of my friends and associates, and you and your friends, if you so desire. The annotations will be collected and inscribed by me over the course of a couple of weeks. The effect will be very much in keeping with the spirit of the big ones, just at a more manageable size and price.

I'm going to do ten of these things at this price. First come, first served.

NBC Evening News Weighs In

Wow--it was nice of NBC to run my Today Show piece in its entirety on the Evening News.

And tomorrow, The Times.

The Annotated Paintings, in order

I thought it would be fun to see all of the damned things. So here, beginning with "The Annotated Murdoch", in rough chronological order, are the twelve (I think) annotated paintings I've done to date:



























Wow. Busy year. Turned out there were 13. Lord have mercy.

If you drop Murdoch and Spitzer, I've painted 11 of these things in basically six months (the last three are dated November, but they were all done by the 2nd, so it doesn't count). This, my friend, is a lot of painting. I swear. I think the strain was showing in the last three.

The solution? I haven't painted a damned thing for about a week. And might not paint anything for another week. Ahhhhh.

The gears, however, I can assure you, are turning, headwise. The juices are flowing. I'm getting fired up.

If you missed The Today Show piece...

If you missed the piece on me on The Today Show, you can see it here.

The Today Show

...just ran the loveliest piece about me. Thanks to all involved. And when Ann, later on the couch, said she thought I was a very talented artist... well, my heart soared like an eagle. I almost spilled my breakfast (Cheerios, sliced banana, 1% milk--@ $.80).

No let's sell some paintings:

If you find yourself visiting The Year of Magical Painting for the first time, let me first offer my heartfelt apologies. Particularly if you start scrounging around in dark corners of the damned thing. It's a vile, nasty product of a troubled mind.

If, however, you just saw The Today Show piece or read about me someplace or other and are interested what might be available for sale, there is actually quite a lot available. The fact of the matter is that my production during the late summer and fall has been extremely high. There's a lot in inventory:

The Annotated Obama (Annotated during the Democratic National Convention)

The Annotated McCain (Annotated during the RNC)

The Annotated AIG (Hank Greenberg)

The Annotated Fed (Ben Bernanke)

The Screaming Pope (Henry Paulson)

The Fallen Prince (Alan Greenspan)

The Annotated Palin

I'm also have a matched second Obama/McCain set done just prior to election day.

Other than The Screaming Pope and the Palin painting, they go for $18,000. You can probably beat me down on price, or pay for them over 3-5 months, but you can't do both.

The Pope, because it is my favorite painting, goes for $25,000. Palin, for the opposite reason, goes for $10,000 (although it's actually a pretty cool painting).

If you click on the August/September/October archives (in the right column), you can find hi-res photos of all these paintings. You might also be able to put the name of the painting in the search box.

Should you like to speak, send me an email at gvraymond@gmail.com.

Thank you for the interest.

The 9 o'clock half hour

I don't know why I even bother to say anything but Today just called to tell me I'll be on tomorrow in the 9-9.30 block. I have mixed feelings about this particular slot (since everybody who has any interest in my paintings has long since left for work), but as if I had a vote. As if.

The moral?

The moral of the story is that life is alternately good and bad. You can't let the bad stuff push you down too far. Or, alternately, if it does push you down, the secret is to then just hang in there for something good to happen. It usually does.

Let me ask you this:

Have you ever found yourself lolling a Saturday away, watching, say, a TrueBlood marathon? And you push pause and go down to Pollio's and grab a tuna sub with lettuce, tomato, onion, s&p ($5.50)? Then you come back up, sit back in your chair, take a bite, and a bunch of juice squirts out of the bottom of the sub onto the chest of your shirt? And after that you're not sure exactly what to do? I mean, you wipe it off--obviously--but you are: a) right in the middle of the marathon and it's pretty gripping, but b) the smell simply does not go away. You think perhaps you should just take your shirt off but that seems like such a hassle, and there's so much blood being spattered around on the screen that you wonder if some of it is going to actually come out of the television, and then, of course, there'll be more stuff to wipe up, so maybe you should wait til then?

Anyway, this was more or less my situation and I am here to tell you, brother, that I was feeling pretty low.

Then you get up and check your email and somebody sends you, in part, something like this?

Hi Mr. Raymond,

My name is [redacted] and I'm a student at the University of [redacted]. I'm
taking a rhetoric seminar course, "Politics and Media" and for my term
paper, I'll be focusing on your Annotated Fuld painting for a variety of
reasons.

I'm currently crafting my thesis, so it's something along the lines in
which the painting simplified the financial crisis for the general public
(about who to blame) and it allowed Lehman employees to vent, be heard,
and be witnessed. In essence, the painting was an exercise of citizenship
during a time when people needed to be heard.

I've been paying attention to the popularity and articles that this
painting has surfaced, but I had a few questions I think only you could
answer:

[Followed by several questions]

Manomanoman, suddenly your heart soars like an eagle? You don't mind so much anymore the smell of your shirt? To quote Bobby Duval: "It smells like ... victory!" You can't wait to write back and answer all of [redacted]'s questions in such a level of depth that she'll wish she was writing her doctoral thesis except that somebody's just been found dead in their bed in a pool of blood and you pretty much have to get back to TrueBlood, so you are going to deal with answering the questions later?

This, dear readers, is how my day's been going.

Now I'm just waiting for the bad stuff to come back around. It usually does.

The Ship Slowly Turns

Imagine if the Titanic had had a slightly larger rudder. Imagine if it had been able to narrowly miss that iceberg. For one thing, James Cameron's most famous movie would have been that one about the kid who wrote for Rolling Stone (loved that scene in the bus with "Tiny Dancer" on the soundtrack). For another, Jack and Rose would have lived the rest of their life high on hog in America off the proceeds of that big fat diamond.

Because The Year of Magical Painting has literary pretensions, the Titanic is of course a metaphor for my painting career.

This just in from The Times: the photo essay on me is scheduled to run on Sunday, November 16 in the Sunday Business Section.

To quote Jimi Hendrix: "Aaack."

The ship slowly turns.

To quote Sally Field (which I thought I'd never do): "You really do like me."

Actually no, Sally. With the exclusion of Gidget, I find your work inexcrable, if that's even a word. Lord knows there's a red line under it as I type away. But still, we're all about the love here at TYOMP. You go, girl.

And I can almost feel The Today Show breathing down my neck, although if you think I'm going to say even one more thing about that until after the fact (including my boy-who-cried-wolf blast-fax alert) you are sorely mistaken.

The McCain/Grasso question

In the end, don't we all just paint the same shit over and over again? The answer is, of course, yes and no.

All that said, one anonymous wag offered this as a recent comment:

Is John McCain related to Dick Grasso? From there portraits, they could be brothers.

This was then seconded by another:

I agree with anonymous on the Grasso comment. I do not, however, agree with his spelling of "their."

I'm like Barack Obama in that I know a mandate when I see one. Thus, I am offering "Big Dick 1 (Hundred Million)"--the beer that, as they say, made Milwaukee famous--and a cropped, almost finished version of what became "The Annotated McCain 2... " for your consideration.

This, of course, is Grasso:



And this is McCain:



Interesting to look at these two paintings with an eye towards how I've changed as a painter. They were painted almost exactly two years apart.

And these, just for the record, are the eyes of Confederate General George Pickett. Look at his left (image right) eye and Grasso's. Extraordinary.





Life, my friend, is a series of circles. They say that Longstreet, who had opposed the now famous charge but nonetheless ordered it in obedience to Lee, sat on a fence watching Pickett's men charge across that long open field and wept openly.

This is Lee. By me:



In some circles, Lee is called Old Bobby Lee. In others, Bobby the Butcher.

I painted Lee in the kitchen of my father's house in Leesburg about a month before he died. It sold a long time ago but every time I look at it I miss it.

And here, of course, is the detail:



Looks a bit like Grasso. And McCain. Because, in the end, don't we all just paint the same shit over and over again?

What are we coming to?

Weekus Horribilis continues, mitigated only by the election results. Wednesday morning I wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head. Make my way downstairs to buy a coffee and The Times. Plenty of coffee. No Times. I walk around a bit, looking here and there. No Times. A Post, yes, but no Times. Wounded, I stop at that diner between 8th and 9th and have two over easy, sausage, hash browns, small o.j., more coffee and an English muffin with jelly ($5.55) and read my Post. Later I go to Manhatten, thinking surely there would be one to be had there. But no. Today, however, I see, via a large ad in the sports section of an issue of The Times that I can buy, that Wednesday's issue is, in fact, available in limited quantities for $14.95.

Regarding that last sentence, a quick reference to Margalit Fox's obituary of John Leonard, if I may. She writes, in part: Mr. Leonard’s prose was known not only for its erudition, but also for its sheer revelry in the sounds and sentences of English. Stylistic hallmarks included wit, wordplay, a carefully constructed acerbity and a syntax so unabashedly baroque that some readers found it overwhelming. The comma seemed to have been invented expressly for him.

I'm not convinced that Mr. Leonard, of whom I was fond in the way we can be fond of people we've never met, cornered the market on commas. Or, more to the point, perhaps it is up to me, him now dead, to don the mantle; to carry the torch; to interrupt every sentence at least once. Throw in some wit and erudition as necessary.

Sleep deep, old soldier. Thy sword is safe.

Anyway, whom, by the way, are they fooling with the $14.95 number? In these cynical times, haven't we all stopped being fooled by the notion that $14.95 is a price somehow more desirable than fifteen bucks? That $14.95 is, given the functional worth of a single nickle, a price that will motivate us to buy something we would not, if priced at $15.00, buy? Fuck you. Pricing it at $14.95 is just as loathesomely disingenuous as Fox News calling itself "Fair and Balanced." Fox News has every right to program itself as a mouthpiece of the Right. And it has every right to suggest they are doing this because somebody has to offer a counterpoint to the allegedly left-leaning mainstream media. And, because of some vague verbiage in either the Constitution or one of its Amendments, it can call itself fair and balanced if it wants to. But surely nobody believes it.

And by it, I am not to their editorial position. Plenty of people (plus some of the slower breeds of dog--golden retrievers and that ilk) believe that. But fair and balanced? Really?

It makes me angry.

God save the Queen.

One More Stevie Wonder Item

Do you know those new turntables you can buy that will convert vinyl albums into mp3 files?

I don't have one (although I have a lot of LPs--including, I think, "Songs in the Key of Life"--and it's an interesting thought), but the CD version of "Songs..." that I found in a freebie bin and downloaded to the Mothership was obviously burned from an LP using one of those turntables. For one thing, when I loaded the disk into my computer no track names came up. I had to manually insert the album name. I don't have the energy to do the song names (C'mon, it's a double album).

Anyway, the gist of the thing is that, in addition to being one of my favorite albums of all time, I'm listening to it in all it's 70s-era pockmarked glory; each click and hiss transferred through the magic of computers first into my iTunes library and then into my brain.

No painting today--I'm declaring it a national holiday. Stevie Wonder Day.

I may have to make some more coffee.

Yo Mama...Here Comes Obama

Somebody wrote that on my first Obama painting. Made me smile.

For the record, I'm an Obama guy. Right now I'm reading the paper, drinking coffee and listening to "Songs in the Key of Life," Stevie Wonder's 1976 magnum opus. It seems appropriate for the moment.

More specifically, I'm listening to "You brought some joy inside my tears." Which goes like this:

I've always come to the conclusion that 'but' is the way
Of asking for permission to lay something heavy on ones head
So I have tried to not be the one who 'll fall into that line
But what I feel inside I think you should know

And baby that's you - you - you
Made life's his*to*ry
Caue you've brought some joy inside my tears
And you have done what no one thought could be
You've brought some joy inside my tears

I've alwys felt that tomorroqw is for those who are too much afraid
To go past yesterday and start for today
I feel that lasting moments are coming fr and few between
So I should tell you of the happiness that you bring
Baby, baby it's you - you - you
Made life's his*to*ry
Oh baby, you've brought some joy inside my tears
Baby you have done what no one thought could be
You brought some joy inside my tears
You brought some joy inside my tears
You brought some joy inside my tears

You've brought some joy inside my tears
Baby, baby you have done what no one thought could be
He - y, you brought some joy inside my tears
Gotta tell you
You - you - you made life's his*to*ry
You brought some joy inside my tears
- you brought you brought you brought some joy inside my tears
Baby baby baby you have done what no one thought could be
You brought some joy inside my tears

You made it baby you made it baby made it made life's his*to*ry
- you you you made life's his*to*ry
You brought some joy inside my tears
You have done what no one thought could be
- No-body ever thought it would be
You have done what no one thought could be

You you you made life's his*to*ry
- Gotta shout about it baby
You brought some joy inside my tears

You have done what no one thought could be
You brought some joy inside my tears
You you you made life's his*to*ry
You brought some joy inside my tears
You brought some joy inside my tears
You brought some joy inside my
Tears

Stevie was always a bit ahead of the curve.

McCain and Obama

Here are photos of "The Annotated McCain 2..." and "The Annotated Obama 2..." as of late this evening.





As usual with my political paintings, red markers are for Republicans; blue for Democrats; black for Independents.

Each is for sale for $15,000 although the set (which is cool) goes for $25,000.

Push "contact me" or email me at gvraymond@gmail.com to make an offer.

There is a high probablility that John McCain will win this election, based on recent personal experience...

Let's not start printing the newspapers yet.



Consider this:

If things had fallen in a slightly different manner, I would have had a photo essay about me in The Sunday Times, a two minute piece on me on Monday's Today Show, and the cover of Metro NY on Tuesday. Hmmmm, I'm thinking to myself. That's a pretty tastey fall marketing initiative.

As it stands, none of these things happened. The rough chronology:

I pick up the Sunday Times, lunge for the Sunday Business section, leaf through it twice and finally come to the realization that I've been bumped. Or deleted. Or deemed not worthy by--and Lord help me process this--The New York Times. The mothership herself.

So I'm blue about that, but I'm working my ass off on the Obama/McCain set for Metro, so I don't really have time to stew. I barely have time to watch half the Giants game. I haven't seen my buddies at the PMC in three days. That's how hard I've been working on these paintings.

And then, at about 9.15 pm (I'm still in the studio working), the producer from The Today Show calls to tell me he is absolutely sure I'll be on Monday morning at about eight. "I don't believe you," I respond. He says, no--he'd deliberately waited this late to call because, given previous bumps, he wanted to be sure. "You're definitely on."

So I recraft my now famous bulk Today Show email, notifying a bunch of people of the new development.

I wake up at 8.15, turn on the show. lalalalalala. I'm bumped again.

But that's okay because the Metro photographer is coming at 11 and I'm ready for her. The shoot goes well. Lots of fun. Get thrown off Church property (not really, by my calculations) by a nun (by my calculations).

Fast forward to this morning. I open my email and read:

Geoff --

Bad news. The paper has decided to go with a different cover. My apologies, I know you put in a lot of work on short notice. Thanks again for your hard work.

[redacted]

Yeah, buddy. No shit. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of that Giants game.

Anyway, I'm licking my wounds and getting ready to take both paintings down on Wall Street. Because really, what else can you do?

But the point is this, and I apologize that the fate of me must so profoundly influence the fate of all of us, but, based on the week I'm having, McCain is gonna win this election.

Oy gevalt!

I'd post my Obama/McCain paintings but...

Finished "The Annotated Obama 2" and twinned McCain yesterday. Spent yesterday evening and this morning transcribing annotations from the thousands of email submissions I was lucky enough to receive. I also took the liberty of peeling appropriate annotations off previous paintings to help flesh things out.

Then the photographer from Metro came by. We shot some stuff in the studio. Me looking intellectual. Or professorial. Something. Anyway, then we rolled up both paintings and headed to the corner of 4th Ave and 9th St. here in scenic Park Slope. We restretched them in front of a church and took enough annotations to satisfy the photog, at which point a nun showed up and told us to get the hell away from the front of her church.

She wasn't dressed like a nun, the record should show, but years of Catholicism has enabled me to recognize them sans habit.

We left without any fuss. One must always obey the nuns.

As far as the images? I'd show them to you but I am contractually bound (not actually, I guess, but still, it's the right thing to do) not to release any images until the Election Day issues of Metro NY (and Boston and Philly, and possibly internationally) hit the stands.

So until then, use your imagination.

What's currently available for sale

If you find yourself visiting The Year of Magical Painting for the first time, let me first offer my heartfelt apologies. Particularly if you start scrounging around in dark corners of the damned thing. It's a vile, nasty product of a troubled mind.

If, however, you just read about me someplace or other and are interested what might be available for sale, there is actually quite a lot available. The fact of the matter is that my production during the late summer and fall has been extremely high. There's a lot in inventory:

The Annotated Obama (Annotated during the Democratic National Convention)

The Annotated McCain (Annotated during the RNC)

The Annotated AIG (Hank Greenberg)

The Annotated Fed (Ben Bernanke)

The Screaming Pope (Henry Paulson)

The Fallen Prince (Alan Greenspan)

The Annotated Palin

I'm also working on a matched Obama/McCain set (see the post below, but don't judge at this point) at the request of Metro Papers. My understanding is that they will feature them on their cover on Election Day. They will be available for sale after that.

Other than The Screaming Pope and the Palin painting, they go for $18,000. You can probably beat me down on price, or pay for them over 3-5 months, but you can't do both.

The Pope, because it is my favorite painting, goes for $25,000. Palin, for the opposite reason, goes for $10,000 (although it's actually a pretty cool painting).

If you click on the August/September/October archives (in the right column), you can find hi-res photos of all these paintings. You might also be able to put the name of the painting in the search box.

Should you like to speak, send me an email at gvraymond@gmail.com.

Thank you for the interest.

McCain, apparently, is ahead

Not so much in the polls, but as far as the McCain/Obama set I'm working on for Metro Papers is concerned, McCain is well ahead.  Progress-wise.

It is still early.  Although, since I have to have them done in about 36 hours, it gets, as Casey Stengel once said, maybe, late around here pretty early.