Pandemic Haircuts

Took a break from painting the neighborhood.   A friend sent me a photo of his homemade haircut and color job, and well, I could not resist making it into a painting.

Does the world need another book about van Gogh?

I love art books and have a substantial personal library myself.  They are costly and my space is limited, so I really take advantage of the award winning San Francisco Public Library.   It is the best!   

The other day I spotted a new van Gogh book on the shelves — Vincent's Portraits Paintings and Drawings by van Gogh by Ralph Skea from Thames & Hudson.  I asked myself, does the world need another book about van Gogh?  

The answer is yes!  This is the book.  

This rather small volume is well written with details that are both concise and organized focusing on van Gogh’s portraiture.  But the true reason I have taken the time to post about this book is the images.  With most art books about popular artists, you tend to see the same images over and over. Even though van Gogh’s body of work is limited due to his sadly short life, I have always had the feeling, you’ve seen one book, you have seen them all.  The brilliance of Skea’s book is that he has included so many portraits that rarely if ever appear in other books.  Our library has another book by Skea, I have requested it.  I suspect I will be asking the library to acquire his other art books as well.  If you don’t have access to a good library, go to your local, independent bookstore and get a hold of this one.

The Littlest Pissarro

Having just seen the Legion of Honor’s exhibit Pissarro’s People one might assume my title of this post refers to a painting of one Camille Pissarro’s small children. Well close, the title refers to a small painting of one of his children. The show is a well curated, thorough retrospective focusing on Pissarro’s world through works depicting family, friends, colleagues and servants. But, the Little Pissarro I am referring to is the portrait of his son Rodo. His son was a young man of about 21 when this portrait was completed. The “little” refers to the rather small size of the painting, about 4” x 6”.

The show at the Legion of Honor is large, filling most of the special exhibit space with nearly 100 works of art. And the painting I lingered on the most, by far, was this little one titled Portrait of Rodo Pissarro Reading. At the end of the show I even avoided the exit through the gift shop in order to go get one more look.

I often find myself drawn to smaller works, particular of better-known artists. The Legion has quite a few little gems; there is van Gogh’s little Shelter on Montmarte and Daumier’s Un Wagon de Troisieme Classe both of which they keep on display upstairs. One of my favorite pieces in the entire building is a tiny Rembrandt etching titled Sleeping Puppy. It’s barely 1.5” x 3.5”.

As an artist there is something quite liberating about working small. Depending on one’s medium and style, particularly for painters, small pieces often can often indicate work that is completed relatively quickly. And for some artists, small works requiring less time are also a sign of a smaller commitment. That lack of artistic commitment can be quite liberating. A “quick” work on paper, board or small canvas has none of the weight that comes with a large-scale painting. Small allows an artist to be far more experimental. When an artistic experiment is small and requires a lesser investment of time, it can produce some impressive results. And when the experiments fail, as they sometimes do, the “wasted” effort is relatively small.

These rules for working small can apply to any artist. But, when you have the opportunity to see the small works of giants like Pissarro, it can be more informative than just seeing the larger works that appear in art books and on museum walls. When museums and exhibits include studies and smaller works as the Legion of Honor has done with Pissarro’s People they present an exhibit for the art lover and the artist.

Finding The Art of Wayne Quinn

In September 2011 I went to the annual sale put on by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.  I usually avoid this, as some of the book buying and hoarding public can be pretty vicious.  Some volunteers advised to come on the last day when things would be more mellow.  They were correct, by Sunday everything was priced at one dollar and there were still plenty of books. There was a crowd, but in general it wasn’t too crazy.  And I did find some more atlases for further adventures in map art. 

I think the real reason I was meant to go to the book sale was to find this one overlooked book titled The Art of Wayne Quinn.  The book was published in 1977.  It was from a San Francisco publisher house called New Glide Publications.  Online there is no reference to New Glide except in listings for books for sale – all published in the 1970’s.  Probably their most notable book was Word is Out, a companion book to the documentary of the same name. 

The Art of Wayne Quinn has 95 pages of excerpts from the artist’s journal with color images of about 20 oil paintings, including detailed images.  Quinn was a realist. The clothing and hairstyles in some the portraits are clearly from the 1970’s though there is an out-of-time quality to much of his work.  Clearly ignoring many of his art contemporaries, Quinn worked in a style that seems more in place among America’s Regionalist Artists of the 1930’s.  It’s work that brings to mind such artists as Andrew Wyeth and Grant Wood.  One can imagine if Grant Wood had lived to a ripe old age and finally fled Iowa for San Francisco, these would have been the sort of paintings he would have been doing in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Finding the book, made me curious to learn more about Wayne Quinn.  The book itself offered little biographical information other than that he was born in 1941 and raised in Upstate New York and had lived in San Francisco since 1963.  35 years after the book was published, the internet would provide me with some answers.  Wayne Quinn was nearly nowhere to be found except for this one brief blog posting. 

Considering Wayne Quinn was nowhere to be found online, lived in San Francisco, and was born in 1941, I assumed the worst.  I found Quinn’s 1987 obituary from the Bay Area Reporter on the GLBT Historical Society’s database.  The obituary was brief with few details.  Two of his friends have recently added a few remembrances of Quinn.

Further searching on his full name, Wayne Douglas Quinn, these items online:

• A reference to an honorable mention award he won at an art show in Palm Beach in 1973. 
• I did find reference to another book of his work called Fourteen Line Drawings published in 1973. 
• He also did a painting of Mt. Sutro. 
• His work was shown at the Jehu-Wong Gallery.  The Upper Market gallery operated from 1971-83.  Some documents from the gallery as well as two of Quinn’s paintings are listed in the Smithsonian’s archives of American Art. 
• One of his paintings is at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art. 

All said there was not very much information out there.  If you come across this blog entry and have things to share about Wayne Quinn, please let me know.  The book was a real find, and I’d like the opportunity to preserve Wayne Quinn’s memory.  He is an artist who should not be forgotten.

Update June 2017:

Thank to a commenter on this post I discovered and just finished reading Mark Abramson’s book Sex, Drugs & Disco. In 2015 Abramson published his diary documenting his wild life in San Francisco during the late 1970s.   Mark was an admirer and eventually became friends with Wayne Quinn mentioning him a number of times in the diary.  He even refers to the Wayne Quinn book that started this blog post. Mark modeled for a nude sculpture Wayne did. There is also a 1979 photo of Mark at an opening of Wayne Quinn’s work at the Tyson Gallery in San Francisco.  He mentions meeting the collector who bought the sculpture and says:

“I could tell right away that he was disappointed to see me in the flesh.  He probably had fantasies about that body on the statue he bought, and I didn’t match them at all.  I wonder what he’ll do with it now.  It must have cost him a lot of money.  Sorry.”

I really want to see a photo of that sculpture, where is it now?

Mark mentions further modeling for Wayne Quinn.  The diary also mentions gallery shows in New York as well as Wayne’s work appearing in Architectural Digest in 1979 (I plan to peruse some back issues at the library). I am glad Sex, Drugs & Disco is out there, it’s a fascinating read, plus offers a few more, albeit brief, glimpses into Wayne Quinn’s life.

Update September 2017:

A reader named Alan shared an image of this Wayne Quinn painting he owns.  It is signed and dated 1965 and appears to be in its original frame.  This was likely a very personal work by the artist.  Alan told me that attached to the back of the painting is a small plastic bag with a lock of red hair.  Will we ever know the identity of this handsome red head?

Alan inherited the painting from a friend, who said told Alan had bought it at a sidewalk sale directly from the artist.  The idea that Wayne had needed to sell this work on the street just makes me terribly sad.

Update September 2019:
A new book titled Queer Holdings: A Survey of the Leslie-Lohman Museum Collection  is available from the University of Chicago Press.  The book features one image of a Wayne Quinn painting.  The book does not include any additional details about Quinn or his work.  The museum's database does not include any images or Quinn's work, including the one featured in the book as of September 2019.

Update June 2026

A new website is available where you can submit your stories and other details about Wayne Quinn and his work.  


Regarding Purchasing and Selling 

I sometimes receive inquiries and comments about selling Wayne Quinn’s artwork.  I am not an art dealer nor an appraiser and have no thoughts on the monetary value of his work and venues where it would be appropriate to sell his work.  I recommend seeking a qualified art appraiser, perhaps through your local auction house.  

If you are selling Wayne’s art that is on an auction house website or online platform (e.g., eBay), feel free to email me the link via my website (tofuart.com).  You also can email your contact information if you would like me to share it with any collectors who reach out to me looking for Wayne's work.

(Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any information or claims made in any auction/sale link about Wayne Quinn's work).

Ray Turner and Long Beach

Recently I wrote about seeking out smaller museums when on the road. Well I have to add the Long Beach Museum of Art to the list. Last weekend I visited Long Beach for the first time. The setting of the museum itself is a winner. It was warm and sunny (definitely not San Francisco in the Summer). The museum sits on a bluff overlooking a beach and the expanse of Long Beach Harbor with the Pacific as a backdrop. It’s a two building museum with an historic Arts & Crafts house and an architecturally appropriate contemporary museum building that houses most of the collection.

The current highlight of the museum is an exhibit called Ray Turner: Population. Long Beach artist Ray Turner has a created a series of portraits of the people of Long Beach. They are all done on thick plates of glass and installed in a grid. Phenomenal painting plus a grid — I was in heaven. If this show was up in San Francisco, I’d have to see it three or four times before it left town. Like so much great painting, photographs just do not do the work justice. The show is only up in Long Beach until September 11^th. From there it travels to a museum in the Midwest. This is a work in progress and I hope it can make a stop up in the Bay Area sometime in 2012.

Heroes with Bling

The current show at the Market Street Gallery promises to be the highlight of the Pride-related exhibits happening this month. The theme is Heroes with Bling. It’s a showcase of local glamour featuring portraits of some of our preeminent divas, drag queens and faux drag queens. The show includes stunning photography from Jose A Guzman Colon and Marianne Larochelle. The mosaic portraits by artist Michael J. Kruzich are Fabulous (that’s Fabulous with a capital “F”). The award-winning portrait of Miss Anita Cocktail (aka Leanne Borghesi) is a personal favorite (see left). The portrait of Sylvester is best described as an icon. It needs to be acquired by the City and given a permanent home in a prominent space. Perhaps the Ceremonial Rotunda at the top of the steps in City Hall. Sylvester could keep Harvey Milk company.

The gallery is located at 1554 Market between Van Ness and Franklin. Check their website for details. The show continues until June 29.