After working for some years in the wrist-slasher vein of my earlier symbolic style, I decided to take a break and do some lighter hearted stuff--not foregoing the other altogether, by any means, but just branching off for a while, along the lines of Graham Greene, who made a distinction between his 'novels' and his 'entertainments'.

Needless to say, life has a way of intervening, and what was meant to be a brief excursion in this territory has lasted seemingly forever.

Be that as it may, the entertainments are presented here. They are variations on a theme based on the phrase, 'Captains of Industry', a wonderful old chestnut of an expression which conjures up the image of selfless, high collared gentlemen sacrificing their lives so that we may benefit from the new mauve, or exploding, celluloid billiard balls, or whatever they turned their hand to in the days of the boneshaker bicycle.

Fortunately, this expression is seldom used now. In the days of runaway corporatism, few people can associate industry, business, and nobility in the same sentence. With these paintings I tried to link both old and new senses of what industry is about.

Most of these are oil on canvas, with a couple of pastels thrown in. A word to curators and the fabulously wealthy: they've never been exhibited all together, and, well, things are kind of tight now, and it would be nice if...