About the Paintings

As a student at Boston University, I learned various methods and techniques for painting with oils and acrylics. Personally I found the use of acrylics to be the best choice for enabling me to express myself on canvas. Between the full-time jobs, my volunteer work for nearly twenty years with the Buddhist lay organization, there has been little time for painting. In 1979 I started a couple of canvases to get myself interested in working again. I wanted to tell a story of the world around me as a gay black man living in the Pacific Northwest. I see myself as autobiographical impressionist, similar to Toulouse and the other French impressionists that visited the nightclubs and brothels of their time. This is my view of this modern chaotic nightlife of society's wild side.

The major painting, “It's Rainin' Men (Its Reigning Men)” is a social commentary and satire about the disco scene at the largest gay club in Portland, Oregon called The Embers. This 37” x 65” panorama, with over 160 faces and bodies depicted, tries to capture the mood and mix of the time period, right down to a flock of drag queens with the biggest hair! This painting has seen years of paint in my studio rooms over the years, along with another bar painting entitled, “Hung Like...” which is a commentary on the “boys at the door.”  This painting is 22” X 28” and is filled with over 65 faces and figures.

Remember to click on the images to a larger version.