Portrait of Buddy Lush

Buddy's real name is Jon Paul, but we started calling him Buddy Lush because he was so amused with the Buddy Love character in "the Nutty Professor." That, and because he was a lush. He wasn't really that bad, but we liked to let on like he was. Buddy worked in a comic book store near to my apartment. That's the setting for this painting.

I'd gotten into a weird thing of using collage elements, but only of things that were directly associated with my subject. Like if I bought something from them, that thing was better to use than some unrelated article. If I were an occultist I'd call such a thing an "object of contagion," like the hair clippings that one might use in a voodoo doll. Certainly I wasn't interested in putting any spell on them, but it just seemed to make a strong association with them. I was really rather obsessive about it, in retrospect. So all of these comic books and centerfolds and toys were things that I'd actually somehow achieved either from Buddy's personal collection or from the store that he worked at.

Buddy's a funny guy and so I wanted my depiction of him to have a sense of humor. I think that the word balloon, which essentially makes him a comic character, was appropriate.

 

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