Rainy California Self Portrait
Self Portrait in my leaky studio during a rainy California Winter
Avoiding the New Hampshire mould that would spread across the
lower right corner of the page thirty years later.
1969 (The Oakland Period)
Still getting used to the incessant hunger and enduring the California rainy season in a leaky shack, I start off the day after a restless night on a piece of cardboard on the concrete floor -- a sleep often fraught with nightmares of being back in the army. The three years of active duty didn't mean they couldn't call me back if things got worse and the Vietnam conflict escalated into a World War. I still have my combat boots, as you can see in the portrait, but they soon wore out and before I hitched out to New York City in Spring of '70, I had sunk 70 1970-U.S.-dollars into a new pair of hiking boots with Swiss Vibrum soles (which soon wore out on the sandpaper-like sidewalks of New York).
Here I started (after coffee at the Redwood Café down the
street, where the waitress gave us unlimited refills) with a with a sketch:
A self portrait as seen in a large mirror propped against something on the
floor. Hence the upward angle of the scene. A lot of detail has been
left out, such as the easel loaned to me by Mr. Walter Menwrath of the
California College of Arts and Crafts, the gallon can of turpentine I kept near
the easel (turpentine saves nine), and a bunch of other stuff, put in the dry
areas disbursed around the shack. My grey work clothes were beginning to
wear out and were soon to be replaced by an ill fitting olive drab jump suit I
found in a surplus store.
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