Literary Inspirations

Years before settling in on biblical subjects for my art, I took other literary works for my inspiration. Two examples are shown below:

Tales from the Decameron, Fourth Day (1961) (20" x 24")

watercolor on canvas board

This piece was a technical challenge since watercolor is not easily adhered to prepared canvas. To solve it, I added a trace of surfactant to the watercolor solutions. This procedure was not always successful, and some of my early pieces using this technique did not survive without significant flaking. When dry, excess paint was scraped off with a razor blade to expose the grain of the canvas. Final details were added with opaque watercolors.

Two Figures from "The Castle" (1962) (11 1/2" x 9 3/4")

oil on sand and plywood



Franz Kafka's novel was the inspiration for this piece. Sand was glued on the plywood board to form the two figures, and then oil paint was applied to complete the picture.