Hank

This source material was a cartoon of Bluto with both of his eyes closed so I opened one of his eyes and painted it in the style of a mannequin eye that I learned how to paint when I was employed in a mannequin factory in LIC in 2002. That's where I initially learned how to paint realistically and I'm grateful for that job as I could not afford art school and never finished college. I wanted to make this painting as an hommage to that job and I named it "Hank" as a reference to Henry Miller who inspired me as a teenager to follow my heart's desire. When I was 8 years old I told my working class parents that I wanted to move to NYC and be an artist when I grew up, they told me it would never work as you have to come from a wealthy family to be an artist and frankly I'm glad they told me that as it just fanned the flames  burning inside me and increased my drive to carve out a career for myself as an artist.