The Staten Island Period Table of Contents:
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The Staten Island Period Table of Contents

of the

The Staten Island Period Series

Night Club Violinist, Nautilus Planet, Tempos Fugit, Study for the Portrait of a Franz Kline Brushstroke, Portrait of a Franz Kline Brush Stroke, Second Study for the Portrait of a Franz Kline Brush Stroke, The Candle Holder.

Things were getting worse at Jerry's loft. My share of the rent was eighty dollars a month and I had to find something cheaper and less stressful. Back in 1970 eighty dollars was a lot of money to some of us. I got a copy of the Village Voice. There was always the ghetto, but I wasn't about to go back there with all those bed bugs.

A few paragraphs later I saw an advertisement for, of all things, a commune. Well, I was desperate enough to try it. After Jerry's tirade when I told him, I was out of there, out of the loft and over in my new place on lovely Staten Island.

New York City has five constituents called "boroughs" of which Staten Island is one. The others are Manhattan, where I went to art school before I went into military service, and then there were the other three, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx (where my fellow lifeguard Larry Adams lived).

The commune days were stormy ones. Most of the people there were trying to be something referred to in those days as "Hippies" which is a Native American term for "human being". Needless to say, those guys didn't make it. The house was in terrible shape, the kitchen was filthy, a pack of stray dogs lived under the porch.

I thought that I might split my rent with a roommate so I told Randal Dehil, an artist who had shared my leaky shack in Oakland, California and had hitch hiked with me across the USA about the place and he was also looking for a somewhere reasonable to concentrate on artwork. So he came over and we became room mates once again and we shared the large room I had with two other artists, Todd Waterman and one other whose name I have forgotten.

Randy was beginning to become successful and had an almost regular art job with the New York Times editorial staff to do specials for them such as an outstand surrealistic portrait of Babe Ruth. He was then able to concentrate on his art work and support himself with it.

I wasn't doing so well. I was still trying to get back into art school or even to afford to get back and so far I was doing a depressing but at the time well-paying job driving a taxi. In those days the Greeks, mostly, ran the taxi business and you got paid a salary (also you got tips). These days they charge mostly "new Americans" rent that usually takes most of the day to raise just to pay for the use of the company's cab. That job took the lion's share of my time, but I did manage to get some artwork done.

One of the other guys at the comune, a civilized man named Bob, also drove a cab part time. But I was full time because I was trying to save up to get to art school in France. I was trying to get by on just the GI Bill which I was to find out was denied for my French school, but shortly thereafter I was able to use it at Oxford University. Hence my Oxford period of art and not my Paris period of art of 1971 to 1972.

But back to this account of the Staten Island period of '70 to '71: Finally, I had enough money saved to embark on my adventure to get into L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Another artist, my friend David Air, helped me get to Kennedy Airport. He mentioned that with all my gear I looked like Van Gogh. Little did I realize at the time how long a trip I was going to be on. It lasted from 1971 to 1990 and twice around the world.

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"Night Club Violinist"
Painted by artist in 1970, Staten Island, NY, USA
Oil on canvas
$27,000.00

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"Nautilus Planet"

Oil on canvas (mural size).

August, 1970 (the Staten Island Period)

$25,000.00

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"Tempos Fugit"
So named because the two clocks in the tower were drawn first and last; right to left.
1971 (Staten Island Period)
Click to see the drawing.

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Study for the "Portrait of a Franz Kline Brushstroke"
Oil on Gesso-primed cardboard
1970 (Staten Island period)
Click to see the painting.

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"Portrait of a Franz Kline Brushstroke"
Oil on canvass.
1970 (Staten Island period)
Click to read the special article about the work.

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Study for the second "Portrait of a Franz Kline Brushstroke"

The full painting for this study never got done. I fell ill in my basement room and later moved to the attic where I could do no more artwork (the attic had no floor, just the frame for the ceiling underneath), and I used it only for sleeping so I could concentrate on using cab driving (in New York City) to raise the money to get to Europe to continue art school.
Oil on gesso-primed cardboard.
1970 (Staten Island period)

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