Travis' Ancient and Not for Sale Art  

 But then everyone has a price...

... especially me.

Victor at the Golden Gate, painted in 2017 from my 1972 photo 

BRINGING MY BRICK ALONG:  Self-portrait, San Francisco, painted in 2020 from a 1973 photo

”I’m like the man who brings a brick along / To show the world what his house was like.”   — Bertolt Brecht 

OF CAFTANS, OF HAMMOCKS, OF ACID, OF FOGHORNS AND BAY BREEZES:  Victor Coming Down in San Francisco, 1973

Painted in 2021 from my 1973 photo

Penny Stallings and Barry Secunda at Bayou St. John, New Orleans, painted from my 2010 photo in 2014

THESE PRECIOUS DAYS... I'LL SPEND WITH HUGH, 2017 

Self-portrait on the steps of Marie Laveau's house, 1020 Rue St. Ann, New Orleans, 2017 

Sarah and John Nybo, White Sands, New Mexico, 2019 

TRAVELING THROUGH ANOTHER DIMENSION: THAT’S THE SIGNPOST UP AHEAD

Christian Nybo in 2020, left, and his father Tommy forty years earlier in 1980, both wearing the same fireman’s helmet and seated on the same log in the Nybos’ backyard in Downers Grove, Illinois

THE CREOLE BEETHOVEN:  My dear friend Wardell Quezergue (1930 - 2011)

[Original in the collection of Penny Stallings and Barry Secunda]

Phoenix Rising:  Jer Adrianne Lelliott, 2018 

NATHAN AND NICK 2004

[Commissioned for the collection of Leslie Bourne, 2022]

URBAN COWBOY: Alvin and Hugh at Sunset Ranch, Mt. Hollywood, 2017 

REBECCA [ROSENBERG] THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, 2017 

THE HENDERSONS WILL ALL BE THERE:  The Bryce-Gilbert Family, Xmas, 2018

Commissioned by Taylor Gilbert for her husband Ian Bryce and their family, 2020 

DESI — Desmond Morgan Huseth, commissioned by his grandmother, me ol’ pal of our cradle days Julie Cobb, 2020. And what a pedigree! The kid’s great-grandfathers were Harry Morgan and Lee J. Cobb!

591 Hillcrest Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois; commissioned by Laurie Vonder Gardner, 2017 

"Qin Shi Huang Di de Bing," Xi'An, China; commissioned by Roxanne Kasten, 2018

"Scott Free," 1995 

Sherry, 1967 

Victor & Travis; San Francisco, 1973 

Victor, 1971 

 “Sailing Away,” 1995

Victor, 1972

"Man with Fish," 1967, from my 1965 linoleum block print

And in the beginning:  Art from my teen years... 

In a life class over a summer at the Art Institute of Chicago, age 14 

Themed national contest winner of some kind, age 16 

My first oil: Rudolf Nureyev, who inspired me in such a SPECIAL way, age 17

The inimitable Hermione Gingold during our time in OH DAD, POOR DAD... age 19

 

One thing I always intended to do was paint my dear friend and mentor Dr. Leon Katz and, on January 23, 2017 when he passed at age 97, I felt as though I missed an opportunity to do so and share with him, through my art, my love and appreciation for his intelligence, his wit, his passion to be an outsider in the best possible way, and above all, his enormous heart. I’ll always be sad Leon never lived to see the portrait I soon after created that graced the program cover for his memorial at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles in June, 2017, but I sure hope the great man would be proud.