A Few of my Own: Liquor Store

Since my first painting, I’d played around with paint—stopped worrying too much about wasting it. Experimented. It didn’t make me a good painter, but a better one.

Still, I think, my greater strength was in the image. Maybe that sensibility is more like a photographer? The photographer’s art is in what to leave out, because they don’t have the option of adding anything. I think that’s how I approached things.

I ran across this fellow on a walk to MoMA in San Francisco in 1991. There was something very Martin Scorsese about it. The man was weaving across the crosswalk. I think you can even see that he’s leaned back on his heel, slightly off balance. With the liquor store in the background, I couldn’t resist the image.

I took a quick photo, then changed it to the way I remembered him. But I edited out all the other people and all the cars. Something about the city. A single person can get lost in it. I just wanted to paint this man—this drunken man, and the liquor store.

Liquor Store, oil on canvas—approx. 24” x 14”