There's a first time for everything...

I was digging through some of my old stuff the other day and I came across yet another assignment I wanted to rehash. Once upon a time a teacher gave the assignment to illustrate the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelly with current events in mind. Well, at the time, Katrina was very current, so that's the tilt most of the assignments took. In earnest, my piece made no sense. Well, it made sense to ME at the time, but now... even I can't remember what it's supposed to be about. That's a bad thing. I aimed to refocus my attention to see if I came up with something that was more readily accessible to the public at large.

This painting is a first for me as I somehow managed to make it through four years of art school (through the bulk of the Bush administration) without painting Dubya once. At the time I very much tried to avoid political commentary, and I just think I got lucky that none of my teachers assigned something that was strictly "politician-geared". The research for this guy was a lot of fun. That's a Brown Pelican sitting on his head - the state bird of Louisiana. The view of the city is looking east, so aside from the river (which is on the other side of the buildings) the nearest body of water is Lake Pontchatrain - 4 miles to the north. And the last thing that I'll mention is the shadows on the buildings are accurate for about 10:00 am on a Louisiana morning.

Attatched below is a version of the painting sans the type, and for grins and chuckles the original painting I turned in.

Oil on canvas. 21 1/2" x 17 1/2"