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Description
This is an acrylic painting on Frisk CS-1O Illustration Board. It measures 12 X 17 inches. There is also a little pastel in it to give the area around the screen some glow.
Years ago I belonged to a small group of strange artists here in the Twin Cities called the Power-Lounge. It was a mix of all sorts of artists. Photographers, dancers, painters, musicians, metal-smiths, pretty much any and all kinds of artists. As important as our art was our partying, so we'd do projects and then arrange some wierd place (warehouses, bowling alleys, empty buildings, etcetera), to throw our art parties/exhibits, get loaded and show our work or perform, as the case may have been.
For one such show, we gave ourselves the assignment to express a childhood icon. That's how this piece came about. The television was one my folks owned and I watched growing up. The whole piece was drawn and painted from memory. The image of the UH-1 became something of an icon also, pervading coverage of the war in Viet Nam on the evening news. It became an all too familiar image to all Americans.
The title of the painting comes from an old adage about complacency in a boat, falling asleep and ending up over the falls. It aptly represents our attitude and, in the end, our final disposition in that war. Curious that at the end of our involvement in Southeast Asia, we were pushing these aircraft overboard by the dozens after they served to evacuate Hmong and Vietnamese loyalists to the relative safety of U.S warships.
The spazzing horizontal hold on those old TVs was quite common and seemed befitting the subject matter. Also curious is the practice Bell-Huey had/has of naming their helicopters after Native American Tribes, (Blackhawk, Apache, Cherokee, Chinook, and so on), This one, the helicopter of widespread choice in Viet Nam was called the Iroquois, named for one of the first group of tribes dislodged and scattered (from western New York) after the arrival of Europeans on North America. Karma...Who knows?

Signed prints available. (ddecay@gmail.com)

Description
This is an acrylic painting on Frisk CS-1O Illustration Board. It measures 12 X 17 inches. There is also a little pastel in it to give the area around the screen some glow.
Years ago I belonged to a small group of strange artists here in the Twin Cities called the Power-Lounge. It was a mix of all sorts of artists. Photographers, dancers, painters, musicians, metal-smiths, pretty much any and all kinds of artists. As important as our art was our partying, so we'd do projects and then arrange some wierd place (warehouses, bowling alleys, empty buildings, etcetera), to throw our art parties/exhibits, get loaded and show our work or perform, as the case may have been.
For one such show, we gave ourselves the assignment to express a childhood icon. That's how this piece came about. The television was one my folks owned and I watched growing up. The whole piece was drawn and painted from memory. The image of the UH-1 became something of an icon also, pervading coverage of the war in Viet Nam on the evening news. It became an all too familiar image to all Americans.
The title of the painting comes from an old adage about complacency in a boat, falling asleep and ending up over the falls. It aptly represents our attitude and, in the end, our final disposition in that war. Curious that at the end of our involvement in Southeast Asia, we were pushing these aircraft overboard by the dozens after they served to evacuate Hmong and Vietnamese loyalists to the relative safety of U.S warships.
The spazzing horizontal hold on those old TVs was quite common and seemed befitting the subject matter. Also curious is the practice Bell-Huey had/has of naming their helicopters after Native American Tribes, (Blackhawk, Apache, Cherokee, Chinook, and so on), This one, the helicopter of widespread choice in Viet Nam was called the Iroquois, named for one of the first group of tribes dislodged and scattered (from western New York) after the arrival of Europeans on North America. Karma...Who knows?

Signed prints available. (ddecay@gmail.com)