Paintings: 2006

in the past years of being a musician, this picture reminds me of when you’d load up on a van, paint it psychedelic and go anywhere you wanted to go off of half a tank of gas and five dollars. But I wonder now as I’ve grown older, how did we go from A to B and how did we feel so free to do all these things that were part of the Sixties?

Henry Berry is very happy because he and his fiancée are getting married, in 1865, in the Hopewell community. Henry and Rhoda sang songs to each other, as they sat in the cold swamps talking about tomorrow’s sunlight. For tomorrow brings a fresh day, winter turns into spring and spring turns into summer. And the thought comes into Henry Berry’s mind, tomorrow will be fine, let’s get married. Behold the wedding ring in Reverend McCord’s right hand.

I love this painting, I love the colors, and it makes my wife happy.

When I drew this everybody was looking at the fiddler, he introduced a song and said it was about the panda bear, using his imagination, of course. So I put the panda bear in there to show what the song was about.

I call these my little people, but they were so strong, they looked after the chief, the runners, everyone, because they prepared the meal that we eat. As you can see in some of their possessions, like the deer they were cutting up to serve as food. There was lots of danger in those days, if you said you were Indian you died, so you could say you were on the run, and grab your gun, and shoot if you have to. That night was dancing the old traditional way, sometimes they danced until night became day. And the earth was beautiful when the sun came up, everything was clean, everyone revealed their dream that they had, as the sun came up.

these are the gang members. They often got together to sing and enjoy being in the swamps near Henry’s father’s house. “I eat when I’m hungry I drink when I’m dry, if a possum is happy then why not I?” These are the words to a dance they sang before leaving for Devils Den, which was their home base in the swamps.