This was my last painting of Lalla Lezli before her death in June of 2002. Anybody who studied illustration at Art Center in the last sixty years or so will remember her.

I don't remember why exactly I had this on my old portfolio site, I think I wanted a piece of evidence to show that I really did know how to paint once and wasn't always just a digital wacom jockey. So I picked a decent-looking piece out of my closet rack, slapped a pretentious-sounding name on it, and uploaded it to the site.

Inevitably, an art professor down in Florida somewhere spotted it, and contacted me to ask if he could present it to his class as "an example of contemporary American art." I had to laugh, imagining what kind of crazy interpretation they'd force on it. Lots of semantic imagery to work with there - guns, the elderly, a Norman Rockwell color palette, and a strong white man with a flag. It all seems vaguely patriotic and Republican. I can see this as the cover on a high school social studies textbook . . . for nudists.

The true meaning behind this painting, of course, boils down a lot closer to "whatever props and models we had handy to toss up on the stage that day."