Tomorrow • pencil and coffee on rag paper • 1996

A skull and spine are drawn over torn headlines about AIDS, and coffee stains eat at the paper the way the disease outran the news. This was the year I graduated high school, and I took the headlines of the world I was given and drew tomorrow.

← Tiananmen Square, 1989 · Art · The Wasteland →

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The Wasteland • charcoal on newsprint • 2013

T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem is a room full of voices that never quite reach each other, and this charcoal stages one on newsprint, paper made to be thrown away: a man standing by the shutters, a lamp, figures seated below.

For Linda, who gave me my first job as a college professor.

← Tomorrow · Art · Imagine →

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Imagine • acrylic on canvas • 2005

John Lennon's face is painted as a negative, light where the shadow should be, with a line from his best-known song written beside it in white.

It was made for a dearly departed friend, Alan. Rest well.

← The Wasteland · Art · Einstein →

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Einstein • pencil and coffee on rag paper • 1995

Einstein's face is drawn in pencil and stained with coffee, ringed by E = mc² and by Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, the principle he argued against for the rest of his life. We are made masters by that which we strive against.

← Imagine · Art · Blessings →

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Blessings • acrylic on canvas • 2009

The word at the bottom is āśīrvād, Hindi and Sanskrit for blessing, set beneath a gold Buddha who sits inside a column of fire-red and orange.

A gift for my philosophy of religion colleague, Sarah, who focuses on the east.

← Einstein · Art · Alhamdulilah →

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Alhamdulilah • acrylic on canvas • 2016

Alhamdulilah, praise be to God, is said after good news and bad alike, and here it gets a landscape: three pyramids, a gold sun setting, and three crimson daughters.

This painting was made in for Anwar.

← Blessings · Art · Jerusalem →

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Jerusalem • acrylic on canvas • 2017

The Western Wall fills the lower half of the canvas in warm limestone, the Dome of the Rock rises gold behind it, and a minaret stands at the upper left: two faiths built one upon the other on a single hill.

The painting is on permanent exhibit with the East Texas Islamic Society.

← Alhamdulilah · Art · Saratov →

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Saratov • watercolor on rag paper • 2018

Saratov sits on the Volga, and here its best-known church, the red-and-white Assuage My Sorrows, stands over a bridge while the double-headed eagle of the old Russian arms rises behind it like smoke.

It was a gift for a Russian friend, painted from her hometown.

← Jerusalem · Art · Make a Joyful Noise →

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Make a Joyful Noise • watercolor on paper • 2018

Psalm 100 opens with the command to make a joyful noise, and this watercolor fills a sanctuary with it in Chagall's colors: a lamp burning at the top, candles at the right, a rabbi at the lectern, and a congregation crowding the bottom of the page.

It was a gift to my congregation.

← Saratov · Art · Tent City →

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Tent City • oil pastel on rag paper • 1998

Rows of tents run back on a diagonal under a turning sky,
worked in oil pastel and warmed with sienna until no white remains.

It was drawn in 1998, in the days of tent city in Saudi Arabia.
This was my view from outside of my tent during Op. Desert Fox.

← Make a Joyful Noise · Art · Florida Moonrise →

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Florida Moonrise • acrylic on canvas • 2019

A full moon comes up over still water, and everything a Florida night does with that light is here: the long broken path of it across the water, a turquoise sky that will not quite give up to dark, and a single tree whose crown has turned into a storm of gold and crimson. I painted this while I was in love.

← Tent City · Art · Vader →

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Vader • oil on canvas • 2005

Darth Vader's helmet glows red out of a red-streaked dark, lit like a coal, the shoulders falling away into black so that the mask is all that is left.

I painted this in anticipation of screening Revenge of the Sith.

← Florida Moonrise · Art · Starry Night in Arabia →

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Starry Night in Arabia • oil pastel on rag paper • 1998

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 from a window at Saint-Rémy, and this oil pastel moves his turning sky over a row of desert tents. My first Christmas away.

It was made in 1998, during my Air Force years.

← Vader · Art · Walker →

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Walker • oil on canvas • 2005

An Imperial walker strides through a teal snowstorm, small against the weather, the way it first appeared on the ice of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

← Starry Night in Arabia · Art · Lady of Shalott →

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Lady of Shalott • acrylic on canvas • 2011

Tennyson's Lady may see the world only in a mirror, and the painting finds her just after she turns to look at Lancelot directly: head tipped back, eyes half closed, the white of her sleeves breaking apart like feathers.

This was a gift for my Humanities colleague and friend, Sara.

← Walker · Art · Free →

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Free • pencil and watercolor on rag paper • 1995

A manatee rises through the surface into pale air while, down the left edge, a handwritten account of the zoos and nets that hold manatees runs like a caption.

← Lady of Shalott · Art · Study of Bedsheet →

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Study of Bedsheet • pencil on rag paper • 1994

A bedsheet hangs from two strings, twisted at one end and slack at the other, drawn in pencil in 1994 with the full range from paper white to dense graphite.

← Free · Art · Still Life in Drawer →

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Still Life in Drawer • pencil on paper • 1998

A paper cone, a glass jar, a sphere on a carved block and a dark bottle stand in an open drawer, each one a different problem of surface for a pencil. I drew this in Maryland.

← Study of Bedsheet · Art · Still Life with Bubble-Gum Machine →

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Still Life with Bubble-Gum Machine • charcoal on rag paper • 1997

A gumball machine, a pitcher and a woven bowl crowd a striped cloth, and every surface is a different problem for charcoal: glass, glaze, wicker, fold.

This was completed in a life drawing class at the Memphis College of Art.

← Still Life in Drawer · Art · Ashleigh's Still Life →

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Ashleigh's Still Life • oil on canvas • 2004

Three pieces of fruit on a plate in my sister’s home.

← Still Life with Bubble-Gum Machine · Art · Nature's first Green is Gold →

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