I made this painting as the flyer for Nonagon’s rock show in Carbondale, Ill. on June 18th, 2022.

I did a couple of drawings/paintings in preparation for a wood engraving. As I type this, the engraving is still in progress but, if all goes well, it will be part of an ongoing series of engravings based on Italian horror movies. This image is derived from the notorious scene in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin which had the producers of the film having to prove to an Italian court that the dogs seen in the film were an effect and not real dogs.

This one started off as a painting I made at one of those “pour and paint” wine bars. I pretty quickly sloshed it together using grade-school quality acrylic paints. It wasn’t horrible but just felt sloppy to me. The painting languished on a shelf in my house for a couple of years until I was mildly inspired to try painting again after watching a cheesy how to oil paint fantasy art program.

I borrowed a bunch of my wife’s acrylic paints and went over everything again, adding detail and color. I then added a bunch of varnish over the whole thing so it began to look almost like an oil painting (I really dislike painting in acrylics). Finally, I added the frame and, in the process, discovered our old miter box saw is no longer aligned to correctly cut 45° angles. Grrr. After a bunch of sanding and widdling I manged to get the painting to fit and I thin it turned out pretty nicely,

No, it didn’t take me four years to paint this. I only recently touched it up, hence the 2002 date. This was supposed to be along the lines of my previous painting, State Sponsored Art, but isn’t quite as good.

The idea here is that everyone’s leeching of the government, but in order to divvy up the milk, someone’s got to decide who gets what. The cow with a window is based on a real cow with a window to its stomach that they had in the Agriculture Department of the University of Illinois. Students could experience the thrill of sticking their hands directly into a live cow’s innards.

This painting depicts how you can’t have state sponsorship (of the arts) without state censorship. Someone has to decide who get which grants even though we all pay for them with our taxes. This picture has also been featured on the cover of Lumpen Magazine.