Early Artwork
While I no longer paint, I spent the first few decades of my life primarily as an artist (having graduated with a double major in painting and filmmaking from the Art Institute of Chicago). I've collected a few of my favorite works from those years here, along with some brief descriptions of each.
"Reunion of Elements" is an oil painting I did in 1970, during the summer between high school and college. This was heavily inspired by the work of Salvador Dali and Leonardo da Vinci, but also by my discovery of LSD that summer, which I experimented with over those next few years.
A drawing done with ballpoint pen on paper in 1968, during a period in my teens when I was heavily influenced by the art of Andrew Wyeth.
During my studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1970s, I would walk over some evenings to the Field Museum and sketch the animal skeletons on display. This is one of those, from 1973, pencil combined with white and black chalk on green construction paper.
This is a pencil drawing I did of my elderly grand-aunt Halla Gulbrandsen, outside of her home in Oslo, Norway, 1972.
Several years later, in 1978, I did this oil painting of Halla, shortly before her 100th birthday and subsequent passing a few days after that birthday.
A pencil drawing I did of a model during life drawing class at the Art Institute, 1971.
This is one of the last paintings I did - a nocturnal landscape done in oils on canvas, 1978.
The earliest work in this selection—a pencil drawing I did of my father when I was 9, as he read the newspaper one evening.
Seven years later, while a senior in high school, I did this portrait in oils of my father, set against an imaginary desert-like landscape, 1969. This was the work that got me a scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mrs. Johnson was an elderly friend of the family during my childhood, who at one point was unceremoniously tucked away in a nursing home by her daughter. I would go visit her sometimes with my parents, but much as we tried to bolster her spirits she clearly felt left behind, and deteriorated quickly. I did this pencil drawing of her during my senior year at the Art Institute, not long before she passed away, attempting to capture some of that feeling of alienation and loneliness I saw in her.
This is a very late work - a mixed-media photocollage I did in 1994, comprised of images clipped from magazines and enhanced with colored pencil. (No computers or photoshop involved.) This image wound up being used by Quest Books on the cover of my 1996 book The Waking Dream.