Oil  60″ x 38″

In the original 1947 black and white photo, these ladies were Bowery hookers, posing in a downmarket cocktail lounge. They may have been transvestites, it was hard to tell, and given that in those days it was acceptable for females to have a little meat on their bones, it would not be surprising if these fell(ow)as were as I suspect. I’ll leave it to you to decide if they are ladies or gentlemen. Maybe a bit of each.

There was no clarinet in the photo, but I’d been playing mine and it rested next to the easel. I’d also been enjoying grapes. I didn ot have rabbits running around, nor frogs, nor was there a peach tree growing in the middle of NYC, where I was living when this painting came to be.

There was the time we suffered from the emergence of a large and greasy rat, which was bigger than my cat, Zoe, who took one look and ran to hide. The rat disappeared and was never seen again. Because of this cowardice, it did not deserve to be included in the above.