HALLOWEEN      Ink on Paper, 54 x 38"

It was the morning of the day after Halloween, 1989. The coffee had just begun to kick in.  I had finally unwrapped the wax lips with fangs that Marsha had given me the day before.  I stuffed them in my mouth and began to faux menace her.  She picked up my camera and began showing me how and where she thought I should “menace.” I wasn’t being entirely cooperative. It quickly spilled out the back door and down the porch steps to the yard.  My brother Andy, who just happened to be there, thought to photograph both of us in the act. Marsha clicked away, frustrated that I wouldn’t slow down enough to let her get all the shots she wanted.  It was all over in less than a few minutes.  Nevertheless, this was to be the photo that would produce a piece that would anchor many an exhibition in the coming years.

 

Everything about this drawing is uncharacteristic.  None of the usual props are there.  The mirrors, windows, eyeglasses... all the framing devices are absent. But there is one way it is like the rest of my work.  Here the framing device was far more simple.  It is irony.  Marsha chose to go with soft focus. I, on the other hand, always tried to get maximum depth of field.  So here the drawing becomes more fully photorealistic in style than any other drawing before or since.  The blurred image stays blurred.  This was an enormous undertaking.  I was much too tentative about using larger size technical pens.  And so the work went on forever. There is really very little detail other than the face and hair in a way that makes the incessant piling up of unnecessarily small dots seem increasingly abstract.  An odd, odd drawing.  It proved, however, very effective at getting people’s attention.

 

DRAFT