A personalized walking stick

This is a strong, artistic, personalized walking stick Suzanne offered me. The objects atached refer to my interests when I wander in the fields or the seashore:

How I came to be featured in russian Esquire magazine

On April, 14, 2009, my birthday, I was just expecting to get three or four phone calls from close relatives (I don´t care much for birthdays, mine or other people´s), and it was a complete surprise when the mobile phone rang and a guy from across the Atlantic, from New York City, asked me if I was interested in having some photos of my paintings published in the May issue of russian Esquire magazine. He was a brazilian, the international editions editor for Esquire, and he was contacting me because the russian editors were interested in some of my paintings from the odd planets series, to illustrate an article about an astronaut. I first thought the article was by some russian astronaut, but it turned up to be about the american astronaut Sandra Magnus who spent four months aboard the International Space Station. The actual article consist of entries from the diary she kept while in orbit. The russian editors had seen my paintings in my old death site whose contact wasn´t working anymore (it has been updated). The brazilian guy must have googled my name and found the site and the phone number of a Tourism office in a small town in Portugal where I had an exhibition. It was from them that he got my mobile phone number. Being brazilian sure helped doing the talk.
The russian editors had specific quality requirements for the photos. Two of the paintings were no longer with me: Planet Cabage was in Holand, and Planet Melon was in Porto. I emailed the owners asking them to have the paintings photographed by a professional and the photos sent to me as soon as possible, because I had a very tight schedule. I took Planet Boob, that is still with me, to a professional photographer. I managed to send the photos in time to be published.
The guy in New York sent me a 200 usd check from Hearst Corporation, and promised to get me a couple of issues, as soon as he received them from Moscow.
In May, June, July, I kept visiting the russian Esquire oficial site to see if my paintings were realy published, but the site was not updated. I decided to contact some russians readers in the site forum, and eventualy one sent me photos of the pages in the magazine featuring my paintings. In May I also contacted some friends in London and Amsterdam asking them to search for russian Esquire, but it seems the magazine is not sold outside of russian speaking countries. In September 2009 I finaly received two issues in the mail.
I was very happy that, for a month in 2009, I was a tiny little bit famous in a huge territory that expands from Vilnius to Vladivostok.


That´s Nick Cave in the cover:
Clik photos to enlarge.




On the right it´s writen "Quentin Tarantino":



KOCMOC reads COSMOS, that one I know...





Russian Esquire magazine is famous for a very innovative graphic quality. Notice the fake hairs on this pages:




Notice the elongated legs in this photo of Nick Cave. Latter the same year, ellongated legs in the photo of an american actress published by a western magazine, caused some controversy. But the russians did it first.

Look, another painting from 2006

I started reading a literary critic by Joseph O`Neil on the December 05 "The Atlantic" magazine, and I was so impressed by the first paragraph, found it so well writen, so concise and revealing, that I decided to put it on a painting. I was inspired by those naive, goody two feet pictures with a beautifull landscape and a poem. The little dots in the middle are flocks of birds. Click to enlarge:

A painting from 2006

I like this small painting (20x40cm), though I feel it´s incomplete...