Beachscape #2

“Beachscape # 2” Pen and Ink on acid-free rag paper 28 x 40”

Still on the subject of pen and ink drawings, even though several galleries told me that their clients kept mistaking them for etchings, I managed to sell quite a few. I still consider some of them the  best work I've ever done and if asked to now, I doubt I could ever recreate them. Even after Ivan Karp told me to paint, it was hard to abandon a medium in which I had invested so much time and expertise.

Once I was offered the opportunity to show my drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of art in their sales-rental gallery. It was at a time when I was broke, behind on my rent, and really needed a sale. When I unrolled my work on a large table for the committee to look at, one of them bought one of the drawings immediately and wrote me a check for several thousand dollars. She had never before purchase a work from any other artist that the committee had looked at.

I took that incident as proof that our angels always show up with perfect timing. However, something strange happened when my show opened. A young couple came in and rented every single piece of my work. I took that as a great success, but subsequently they never payed the rent and refused to return them. The Museum wound up sending the sheriff to retrieve them and having to sue the couple for the accumulated rental fees. The Museum did send me the check, so it all came out okay in the end.