The Naked Silo

16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2008, private collection This is the painting I donated to "Love Cures" at Art Center/South Florida , which contains work to be auctioned on 5 February to raise money for Band of Parents, an organization dedicated to funding research in pursuit of a cure for neuroblastoma. Participating artists include Ray Azcuy, George Bethea, Pablo Cano, Rosemarie Chiarlone, Elisabeth Condon, Adalberto Delgado, Carlos DeVillasante, Franklin Einspruch , Priscilla Ferguson, Daniel Fiorda, Lucie Forrest, Andy Gambrell, Rebecca Guarda, Joshua Levine, Stephanie Lee-Jones, Peter Lik, Emilio Martinez, Beatriz Monteavero, Milé Murtanovski , Michele OkaDoner, Yoko Ono, Josephina Posch, Darren Price, Ralph Provisero, Brian Reedy, Carolina Salazar, Yolanda Sanchez, Carolina Sardi, Claudia Scalise, Diego Singh, Eugenia Vargas, William Wegman, Michelle Weinberg, Annie Wharton, Richard White, and Laena Wilder. There are also selections from the Martin Z. Margulies

15" x 22", watercolour, 1998 I'm in the home stretch now with the last of the Lincoln paintings for Union Pacific . I've shifted over to an almost nocturnal schedule in order to get these and many, many other things done. So I am...awake. The ring the model's wearing is based directly on a design by Toronto jewellery designer, Lisa Cinelli . We met during the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in 1998. I was only painting in watercolours at that time and had them on display and to my left was Lisa and her amazingly-designed jewellery. The model in the reference photo for this was already wearing a ring, but I decided to use one of Lisa's cool spiral motifs. I liked this pose so much, I had Ashley strike a similar one and used it in Corona Solis (india) .

 22" x 15", watercolour, 1998 I'm still working on the Lincoln illustrations ...and still watching Bond films. The model for this picture is someone I was working with at the time of the massive photo shoot that is still providing material for my paintings (the first blogged painting of this model -but not the first one of her I painted- is here ). I thought she sort of had a Bond Girl look and posed her in an evening dress and with a water pistol in a few photos to evoke that feeling. My favourite part of this painting is the background, specifically the way it kind of looks like it's been shot where her head is and then is falling apart in shattered fragments in the lower third. I also like the brown/blue/white combo of that bottom portion. The title is the first line from the Wild Strawberries song called "Minions" from their 1998 album, Quiver .

15" x 11", watercolour, 1999, private collection I'm currently working on a number or illustrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday and my accompaniment for the next few days are the James Bond movies (there's no correlation between the two --that's just what's happening in the studio this weekend). I've already posted this painting of a young boy imagining himself as Bond, but I found this portrait of Sean Connery would be a nice way to carry over my Bond mood online. This is not based on my own photography.