“Always Merry And Bright”
acrylic latex, photocopies, photo on silkscreen frames
50” x 72”
1992

During the 1990s Tania and I worked at an interior design company called Country Life. We worked in the warehouse and ran the samples department. Next door to our warehouse was a silkscreen company. One day our coworker Brian discovered that the silkscreen company would throw away old screens in the dumpster. The old silkscreens repurposed perfectly as frames for canvases. We made friends with the owner of the silkscreen company and recovered hundreds of old screens and hauled them back to our studio over the next decade.

I liked to build bigger canvases by hammering several screens together, as I did with this piece called “Always Merry and Bright.” You can see that it is four silkscreens attached together.

Henry Miller, the subject of this painting, has been a huge influence on my life. I referenced one of his watercolors with this painting. On the canvas there is also a photograph of Big Sur attached, along with photocopies of Miller’s portrait on this large 6’ x 4’ surface. I painted this in the summer of 1992, as we were getting prepared to go to Big Sur to get married.

In my portfolio I noted back in the day that this one was sold. Unfortunately I didn’t write down who it was sold to… darn. But it’s out there somewhere in the world!