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My dad was a Kessler's drinker. He drank shots and beers almost everyday of his working life. A steelworker in Pittsburgh, the bars gave you Kessler's Whiskey, unless you asked for something else.

Alcoholism presumably wrecked the family, and eventually killed him. He left after 20 years of marriage in 1960 when I was six. He never contacted the family again.

 

I found my father 14 years later, when I was in the Marine Corps. But that is another story.

 

My step-father and mother cut my dad out of all family photos, so I had no idea what my dad looked like. He was never spoken of either. Recently a number of old photos have shown up, many cut or torn in half. I have painted a few of those photos, but then my oldest brother found the only surviving picture of my dad, from 1940, when Dad was 21. 

 

My dad had a problem with Kessler's Whiskey. I boiled some Kessler's down (to thicken it) and painted this portrait of my dad, taken from the small grainy 1940 photograph.



Found this excellent frame at a thrift store and replaced the the old frame on the painting Cold Wind, which I did a few years ago. I love old elaborate frames, but they are hard to come by anymore. 





An art collector in Ypsilanti, Michigan and a wonderful dear friend of many decades, has purchased 19 Birds for her husband. This painting was a lot of fun to paint, as I just kept adding more and more birds, until it felt done. Acrylic with lots of heavy gel and textures, it is 36 x 36 on a gallery canvas. I am so happy it is going to a loving home.




 


Space Stuff. Another fun painting with flying saucers, aliens buried underground, spaceships, and more. 36 x 36 pumice, acrylic, inclusions and gel.





More aliens, skeletons, spaceships and flying saucers. And they're all hanging around Planet Nine. 36 x 36, pumice acrylics, inclusions, and gel.




 


Art collectors in Minneapolis purchased Another Saturday Night.





This painting is from a photograph taken in 1945. My mom was 25 at that time and they had been married five years already. My dad's shoulder, just to the left of my mother, is the only picture I have of him until some pics I took in 80s, after I found him. I guess my mother may have clipped this photo after my father left us, but I really don't know. It's one of the many mysteries of a family history that I do not have answers for.

18X24 gallery canvas.