Painted in 2002, 33 by 48 inches. I first approached Herb about painting him when undertaking portraiture was just an occasional fancy. Herb’s enthusiastic response to this request and his wholehearted encouragement has played no small part in the lively spirit with which I executed this painting, and which I have hoped to maintain through the rest of my work.
Although Herb is eminently an approachable, friendly person — someone who will easily respond to a casual greeting from even a stranger with a generous, two-handed wave — I decided to paint him in a moment of contemplation. It is, in light of his warmth and openness, a very romanticized and particular view of the man. Still, I think that all of his friends in Beverly (many of whom met him at the Atomic Café where he is, in this portrait, seated) have caught glimpses of him like this. He is alone, and his thoughts, perhaps, on events of the past. At his age, there are undoubtedly many persons and places behind him that only now can be accessed by memory. The empty chair next to him emphasizes this aspect of aging — that we inevitably see many people close to us grow distant or pass away.
The color scheme and two-dimensional structures too play important roles in building up this romanticized scene of the contemplative Herb. While Herb, in himself, has been carefully colored, and strongly drawn, the chairs and wall behind him remain nearly monochromatic. Though this was done mostly by intuition, it reads strongly to me as a parallel to his thoughtful pose. The physical objects fail to achieve as much reality, as it were. The world of this café diminishes next to my fascination with Herb’s thoughts, or memory-world.
In a contrast to this sort of distancing, I have tried to emphasize the weight of his body in his chair and have chosen a scene with strong, simple geometrical forms to depict Herb’s concurrent solidarity with his environment. Although his mind sometimes seems on distant subjects, he has never struck me as a person at odds with himself, or with his place in the world. He remains always approachable and generously friendly.
John Mahoney, co-owner of the Atomic Café, told me that when he showed the painting to Herb (for its first home was on the wall of John’s café) Herb’s first comment was, “Do I really look that sad?” I apologize to him, and to anybody who knows Herb if this painting reads that way to you, but it doesn’t to me. Far from being a sad scene, he looks to me damn cool, like an old James Dean.
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