Hey there, welcome or welcome back!  Up for the offing this week is a twofer, a double feature, an opener and headliner, a double bill, if you will…you get the idea.  Here are two studies in tension, opposites, and bad puns – departing directly from two of my favorite hard rock behemoths – the subversively jokey/rockingly legit The Darkness and the pinnacle of it all, Led Zeppelin.

The first watercolor for your kitschy consideration is a loud riff on a fuzzy holiday sentiment - “I Believe in a Thing Called Love (Baby It’s Cold Outside)”.   A luxurious white Les Paul Deluxe pines against the birches outside a tiny bird box with no chance of entry.  A quiet snow falls partially covering our patient suitor’s cable, assumingly leading to a loud amplifier that dare not show its face. Ever the outsider, perhaps our (anti-?)hero is trying to charm and serenade its way inside regardless.   With intentions as pure as the overdriven snow, here’s an image as soft and tasteful as a snagged merino wool sweater…

Second up on the deck, let’s drop the needle on my latest watercolor, “Bustle in Your Hedgerow”, a picture of tension, perhaps personal, perhaps political.  We have double amps fronting a double cloud sunset over a pastoral English field.   It’s a story of opposites pulling, never touching and never separating.  It’s a competition with no winner, an argument with no answer.  Don’t be alarmed now, all the allusions from the song - Jacob’s Ladder, Romantic poetry, the Pied-Piper of Hamelin, corny medievalisms, all floated but not explicit, similarly form a tension of vague meaning that can’t be nailed down. Just as there are two paths you can go by, sometimes words have two meanings. The only resolution offered lies in the Zenesque send-off, “When all are one and one is all, To be a rock and not to roll”.

Thanks for reading, please check the links at the top of the page to my other work. This and 20 other similar watercolors are to exhibited as part of this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Details are on my homepage. Until next time, toodles!