This new painting is called "Billiards at Embers Lounge". It is 18 x 24 inches, oil on canvas. I tried to clean up the photo, when I photographed the painting there was alot of glare in the upper left corner.
This is one of the first paintings for my upcoming January show that includes a figure. Over the years I have excluded any figures within my paintings, my effort was often to express lonliness or aloneness. And a figure makes for an entirely different kind of painting. I think it works well here, this lounge interior would be incomplete without the guy shooting pool. It's like my own version of one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings, "Night Cafe with Pool Table".
I happened upon Embers Lounge when I was out on photo safari a few months back. William Wray accompanied me to Whittier, we had just shot a vintage bowling alley and wanted to get a cocktail at Embers and rest our feet. We were pleasantly surprised to find the bar filled with mediocre paintings done in the 50's or 60's by a patron who had paid off his bar tab by decorating the place with his depiction of hell... hence the name of the lounge, "Embers". It was like we time warped back into the 1960's.
