January 1980, Oil, 28 x 36

This was a fun painting. It made its way back to me. One day many years ago, when I was cleaning the garage, when I was in a bad mood, I tossed it out. So this is all that is left.

January 1980, Oil, 36 x 48

When you don't have live models, you go to Playboy Magazine. This was another one of those experiments. I was obviously into breasts at that time. It was a fairly large painting, I liked it sufficiently to keep it around.

February 1980, Oil, 18 x 48

I guess I needed a challenge. I took a picture from a Playboy Magazine, cropped it and then painted it twice, turning over the canvas from time to time. It's difficult to paint a nude once, but painting her twice in the same picture, making it look identical, proved very hard indeed. I guess you have to be a painter to appreciate the difficulty. But no redeeming value otherwise.

February 1980, Oil, 24 x 30

Inspired by a photograph in Arizona Highways Magazine.

February 1980, Oil, 61 x 40

A very large painting that I never finished. I took a photograph of a pond behind the old drive-in theater in Lakewood, NY. I wish I had finished it.

March 1980, Oil, 30 x 24

Inspired by a photograph. I always wanted to walk down this road and see what's beyond the horizon.

This painting is now in the living room of friends in Jamestown, NY.

April 1980, Oil, 33 triangular

An experiment I was quite happy with. I tried a hexagonal and octagonal painting also, but those failed and ended up in the trash. This one works. It's in my garage. It was done mostly with the palette knife.

May 1980, Oil, 18 x 24

I read a lot of Nietzsche during my youth and it shaped my thinking. Nietzsche, along with Goethe and Schiller is renowned to be one of the major shapers of the modern German language. Kind of like Hemingway to English. I painted this from a photograph on the cover of a book.

I gave it a thick glossy varnish and bought an expensive frame.

I do not know if this painting still exists.

May 1980, Oil, 40 x 50

This is one of the largest paintings I ever did. I gave it to a friend in college. She had a big white wall in her apartment that year. That was a good spot. But then, I am sure, when she moved, the painting probably stayed. Who knows where it is now?

May 1980, Oil, 40 x 30

This is definitely one of my best. The colors here do not do it justice, either. The painting is lost, but I hope somebody is enjoying it. This painting took a long time to finish. These were my boots in the military. Besides going through basic training, I hiked the Grand Canyon and many a mountain in these boots.

June 1980, Oil, 18 x 24

People always ask me why I would do a thing like this. It was a study, an experiment, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

June 1980, Oil, 34 x 20

This is the house of some dear friends. They still have the painting. Drive by the place, and it looks just like it now, over 25 years later.

June 1980, Oil, 24 x 30

This was done on site at the Jamestown, NY bird sanctuary. Later the property became the Jamestown Audubon Center. The colors were actually vibrant, but the photograph has yellowed badly. As far as I know, his painting decorates the home of friends in Indianapolis.

June 1980, Oil, 24 x 40

Behind the Jamestown, NY airport. This was more a study of what I could do with bright colors and a knife than anything else. Once the mosquitoes became bad, I had to finish it up quickly and get out of there.

July 1980, Oil, 24 x 18

Driving down Bigtree Road from Busti to Lakewood in Chautauqua County. You can see Chautauqua Lake in the background. I spent the afternoon in a field painting this. It is one of my smaller paintings, but I was always proud of it. There is a lot of loss of definition in this photograph, but the feeling still comes through. It is now in Indianapolis.

July 1980, Oil, 24 x 30

I was always emotionally involved in pain of children. This painting was motivated by a newspaper clipping of a famine somewhere. I tried to put much pain into the colors and I think I convey the loneliness and despair fairly well. I wish I still had that painting. It's one of my favorite ones. I don't know where it went and I wish I still had it. It would work well with Afghan Women.

July 1980, Oil, 18 x 24

Jamestown hosted an art fair downtown in July of 1980. I was one of the exhibiting artists, and that was actually the first and only exhibit of my work ever. While everyone was busy socializing and trying to sell their work, I painted the view from where I sat. There were a lot of spectators. The colors are vibrant. This old yellowed photograph does not do it justice.

The painting spent many years on a wall in the lobby of the Palace Theater. The theater was renovated and is now the Reg Lenna Civic Center. http://www.reglenna.com.

The painting is still hanging in the offices of the Jamestown Arts Council today.

August 1980, Oil, 20 x 36

This is still owned by my friends in Indiana. The idea also came from a magazine. I couldn't afford all these live models. They re-titled it "Rolling a Joint," and since they own it, I guess they can do that. Nice butt.

November 1980, Oil, 28 x 36

This painting was also motivated by a newspaper article. A car was washed away in a flood. There were several occupants in the car and all but one of them died. This man survived. He had tried to save his friends, but did not succeed. He was just rescued and is warming up in the back of a police car, wrapped in a blanket. This is a large painting, mostly done by palette knife. I loved this painting and I wish I still had it. I don't know if it still exists.

November 1980, Oil, 24 x 30

A self portrait of the artist as a young man. This painting was always  one of my favorites. It now has a long history. I had a brief relationship with a woman named Linda in 1981, and she loved this painting. When we split up, the painting remained with her when she moved from Arizona to Florida. Linda was diagnosed with leukemia a few years after. She knew she was dying, and in the process of getting closure, she gave the painting back to me. She died weeks after that, at the age of 36. I have the painting now, it's quite beat up and scratched, but I intend to fix it one of these days. It's still a treasure though. It's now in a box in my garage.

One of the flaws that I didn't notice when I painted it was the overly long neck. Fortunately people don't really look at the neck but stay with the face.

December 1980, Oil, 20 x 36

Brek was a friend. One day he gave me a Playboy centerfold and asked me to make a painting of it. Here it is. I don't know where Brek is and if he still has the painting.

December 1980, Oil, 65 x 45

This is the largest painting I ever worked on. It came from a photograph taken during the Holocaust. I struggled with human tragedy during that phase in my life, and I think I captured some of that here.

December 1980, Oil, 24 x 36

My mother and my youngest brother. She sent me a snapshot one day and I started with this painting. Her face is way too dark, but again, I wasn't done. Chris turned out ok, though.