Flat Foot Floogie

A jazz song by Slim Gaillard came out in 1938 called "Flat Foot Floozie with the Floy Floy".  Floy floy was current hepcat slang for some kind of disease.  Of course the lyrics weren't suitable for broadcast radio, so the song was rewritten, by Fats Waller, I believe.  After it was cleaned up for radio play, it made no sense whatever, but Benny Goodman's version became a number one hit that year.  The title had become "Flat Foot Floogie with a Floy Floy."

This year, when I first read about the new flatbed Fuji digital printer, I was reminded.....you know.

This printer has changed my whole attitude toward fine art reproduction.  Without getting technical, this printing machine, with a scanned in image, produces the highest fidelity to the original artwork I have ever seen.  Putting the original painted canvas side by side with the same sized reproduction, one needs a jeweler's loupe to distinguish one from the other.  The varnished print needs no glass, fits a standard frame, and looks like an original painting.

Shown here are the first four paintings, apart from my picture blocks, I have had reproduced.

Point Hernandez  18" X 24" hardboard

deLeon  18" X 24" hardboard

Rosalita  18" X 24" hardboard

Catalina  18" X 24" hardboard

 

Little Girl, Big Painting

The germ for my largest painting to date was an entirely invented figure of a little girl dancing:

Even photographs of people dancing don't always capture the feeling and the rhythm; one has to fake it.  This is where the limitations involved with working only from motion picture frames shows up.

Religious artists have to invent convincing drawings of angels flying or supernatural individuals ascending to heaven.  Myths often require drawing things which couldn't be observed in real life.  Here is an elaborate example:

So I invented a dancing child who conveys the infectious rhythm and abandon of jazz music

Vanderbilt University bought the painted study I made of her; it hangs in the collection of the

Black Cultural Center in the Gillette House:

I built up the rest of the picture around the dancer, furnishing it with a jazz band, some spectators beginning to gather, and more anecdotal incidentals than I would include today: boys running, a dog, baby buggy.

The whole scene was set in the dappled shade of an oak tree in order to further agitate the surface and liven the composition.