Year of the Rat
2008 - 11"x12" Acrylic, oil, pencil, colored pencil, on wood.
Finished with two coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish #1312
(Private Collection - New York)

April 2008

The cat-like creatures are rats celebrating the Chinese New Year and the year of the rat. They are dressed in costumes of their predators the cat and snake. The masks are cat faces and their tails are decorated like snakes.

Towards the center of the painting is Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Brooklyn (symbolized with the pyramids). The spiral above the buildings is a snake body. I scraped away the head, but the forked tongue still remains. The snake body also represents the subway tracks and the underworld where the rats live.

I include the sun and moon in many of my paintings. In this painting I used a Native American Indian inspired Sun God (lower right corner).

There was a previous painting I started using oil paints. I covered that with gesso and started this new painting. Since the gesso doesn't adhere well to the oil paint, it can be scraped off exposing the underlying oil paint. The green squares and some of the black exposed with the razor blade marks are oil paint. The red and yellow are acrylic over the gesso.

I used a razor blade and exacto knife in many of my paintings, and this technique was used extensively in this painting. The rat bodies originally had no exposed wood. I used an exacto knife to etch away the paint layer, leaving only the black areas. Some wood was also removed so these areas are slightly recessed.

The painting is dated 4706.

Some photos of the painting in development: