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My friend Steve is an attorney who was kind enough to give me some legal advice on these portraits. I offered him a drawing, the currency of the broke ass artist. He’s a guitar player himself and told me his favorite is the jazz guitar legend, Wes Montgomery. I had never heard of him, so it was a great thing to discover someone so inspired. I don’t know anything about jazz, but I like to think I know greatness when I hear it. And see it. The word that comes into my mind as I watch him on Youtube is dignity. Everything about him, the look in his eyes, the gentle smile, the total lack of pretentiousness, all of it radiates a quiet dignity. His playing is a perfect combination of massive intelligence and raw intuitive emotion. The amount of joy, and inherent human goodness that comes from music, and especially musical genius, never ceases to amaze me.
Check out Wes playing Round Midnight here. He died of a heart attack, in his early 40′s, the year I was born, 1968. Rest in peace.
Originally titled “The Ascension of Ronnie James Dio” this print is a tribute to the righteous “evil” of metal. Just imagine if all of the creative energy that goes into metal – the total chaos of the shows, the listening to tracks, the gatherings, the conversations, the clothes – wasn’t available to anyone. Where would all of that energy go? What would all of those outcasts, rebels, victims of bullshit religion, alcoholism, fake morality on TV, corrupt politics and waste-of-time schools do with all their pent up rage? They’d kick the living shit out of the world. That’s what they’d do. Dio’s contribution to righteous evil, the creative channeling of darkness is awe-inspring. Stepping in to fill Ozzie’s shoes, and building a legitimate and unique Black Sabbath is one of the great creative achievements of all time. Rest in Peace, RJD. You did more good for the world than most people will ever know.
Click here to view in the gallery.
This drawing is inspired by his recent performance at the Hollywood Bowl. It was the most impressive, artistic show I’ve seen. A massive black-clad orchestra lead by a wildly charismatic, baton-wielding conductor, rich, beautifully designed multimedia, and all of it guided by a soul who radiates so much power and tranquility it felt like a glimpse into a higher reality. No pretension. No big ego. No guilt trips in his promotion of human rights. 100+ people on stage perfectly in synch. Screens bursting with light shows, images of musicians playing live, cutting from black and white to color, blurring, distorting into digital bits, people and technology merged in creativity and free expression, with no ridiculous agenda.
As the show began, Peter Gabriel walked onto the stage and calmly laid out his plan for the evening. The Los Angeles night sky was gentle, even starlit – a rarity in a dirty city. At one point the entire place was so quiet it felt as if we were in the halls of some ancient temple. When the show kicked into gear, I turned and saw my wife in tears. There’s something transcendent about righteousness that moves us to the core. It’s hard to imagine how someone could live a more full and noble life – as an artist, a businessman and someone devoted to protecting human rights. I tried to capture his essential human decency here, the way his heart offers a path through the darkness of the world. I made this one for my wife as a gift on Mother’s Day.
If I could only keep one James Cagney film, it would be White Heat. I read somewhere that the genius of Shakespeare is he packs scenes with so many layers of conflicting emotions. This scene has the same kind of genius. Here, Cody Jarrett, leader of a gang of cold-blooded killers, sits on his mother’s lap, after suffering some kind of anxiety attack or epileptic seizure. The movie, brilliantly, never says exactly what his condition is. The gang has just pulled off a vicious train robbery that had a gruesome setback. They’re holed up in a small house in the dead of winter and Cody is challenged by Big Ed, his rival within the gang. This sends him into a fit, and his mother guides him into another room so he won’t be seen as weak. There, all alone in a bedroom with his beloved mother, he sits on her lap and she strokes his head until he’s strong enough to return to the gang. It’s perverse, moving, hilarious and stressful all at once. And just imagine the size of Cagney’s balls to sit on his mother’s lap. Whenever we see great scenes, we forget that no one ever knows what will work and what won’t. Just imagine the level of humiliation Cagney would have suffered if this movie bombed. Of note, Tony Soprano watches a lot of Cagney, and it’s safe to say you’d never have Tony Soprano and his mother without Cody Jarrett and his. I mixed things up stylistically – dirty, beautiful, dark, light, soft blurs and high contrasts – to capture the range of the scene.
The sheer glory of Cagney’s gangsters are their ability to feel. Here, Cody pays a high price for letting his guard down, for being vulnerable, for caring about someone else. White Heat is a “social horror” story, an exploration of evil/madness. Some people live with a belief that everyone is out to get them, that no one but the closest blood can be trusted on any level, and, inevitably, this becomes their reality. I always loved James Cagney, but in doing these drawings, my respect grew 1,000x. His face, and whole being, transform so completely depending on what he’s feeling that he literally looks like different people in different scenes. The only performance I can think of that rivals Cagney’s Cody Jarrett, in terms of spiritual stature, is Al Pacino in The Godfather. The emotional complexity of this moment in the film is enough to make one lose bowel control. It’s hard to be a person.
There’s something borderline insane in 99% of parents with high hopes and great expectations for their kids. Yeah, all parents claim to just want their kids to be happy. But most are full of shit. What they want is something to brag to their friends about, accomplishments that make them feel better about themselves without any true regard for the quality of work their kids put out, the depth of thought and feeling they put out, etc. Parental narcissism, the total inability to see one’s own kids as separate beings, is even more widespread than the fat ass obesity epidemic we’re in. It’s sickening. I try not to spoil films, , so, you might need to see White Heat to know what I’m talking about here.
Since Jesus doesn’t really move the plot of The Big Lebowski along, I always wondered what he’s doing in the film, especially the bit about him being a child sex offender. All I can come up with is that he makes the bowling scenes hilarious, and he’s so absolutely bat shit crazy he makes our heroes seem normal by comparison. All in all, I think the Coen Brothers’ view of men is that we’re pretty much all bat shit crazy – l’chaim! – and in the end our individual lunacies are just a matter of degree. This drawing was a four-alarm ballbuster because to nail him he has to be really funny, eerily doe-eyed, super psychotic and likably demented. I have no idea why I added his name, but it felt right. If that’s good enough for The Coen Brothers, it’s good enough for me.
This character captures a primal fear – the fear of going through your entire life utterly clueless. In the hands of a lesser actor, Donny could easily be a worthless cliche. But with those soulful eyes and his vague sense of miserable irritation, Steve Buscemi turns a lovable simpleton into one of the more haunting portrayals on screen. The Coen Brothers have all kinds of genius, but I think they’re at their most brilliant in casting.
