The debut Death Series—tributes to creative people who expired in 2021—was celebrated by the first eighteen works of 2022. You can find them in the beginning of the 2022 gallery.
The highlighted 2021 tribute group was selected from end-of-year this-is-who-we-lost-this-year postings from various news sources. (I also discovered I could’ve gone to Neil Genzlinger, prolific obituary writer for the New York Times, as a source for all deaths cultural.)
This year, 2022, the second for the Death Series, I elected to make my own end-of-year list of notable deaths. I filed notices of death as they were published throughout the year—the ones that seemed interesting and/or admirable. I amassed 75 files. I did not include The Queen and some other biggies since the media efficiently saturated them.
And as most of you are aware, currently, since Covid and its restrictions, inspiration for my artworks generally comes from using online source quotes or books rather than real life encounters.
The more demanding part of the 2021 death series proved to be (not surprisingly) that not all the amazing dead people used a visual language. That is, for me to get an image generated—from what I learned of the person online and mostly from quotes—I generally prefer a verbal/visual prompt. For example: rapper DMX is quoted as saying, “Right, wrong, good, bad, heaven, hell. I think that is the theme of my life. I think you have to know both in order to honestly choose one.” And so we have two abstract canvases expressing Both Sides of the Fence.
Sometimes I used personal information as compositional elements. For example: Betty White’s tribute shows hot dogs, fries, and stairs. She said these were her favorite foods and she used the stairs in her 2-story home as exercise. The mustard and ketchup are decorative.
A note about death certification: why or how the person died
According to an article (updated 9/14/2022) written by Kelsey Borresen for HUFFPOST, “90% of the deaths in the USA are death by natural causes.” Borresen continues, “A natural death is one that occurs due solely to an internal disease process in the body. . . cancer, heart disease, stroke or diabetes would fall under the ‘natural’ umbrella.”
Yet on a death certificate, cause of death [the agent] may differ from manner of death [how].
“Manner of death is a classification of the causes based on how death occurs, which includes natural, accident, suicide, homicide and undetermined,” Dr. Cheng-Ying Ho, associate professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told HuffPost.”
So a toilet falling from the sky and striking a person dead is not a natural death and is considered quite accidental. You may also have heard of death by misadventure. This coroner’s term originated in Britain to indicate death due to risk willingly incurred—a preventable death. As each state, county and country has their own rules for determining cause and manner of death, we can safely assume it is a variable and perhaps not important to note publicly. It is data significant for statistical purposes.
For the 2022 death series I am presenting my alphabetical list (by first name) of some notables who are no longer present on this earthly plane of reality as we know it. See if our interests match or collide. As studio work progresses I will reference some of these, yet probably not all. A few links are offered. Brief quotes are from sourced materials.
The number following their name indicates age at death. This is followed by what did them in, if reported. (See above paragraphs about death certification.) An asterisk suggests a good chance for visual development. The people I can image from quotes will be developed over time. Stay tuned with Studio Practice: New Works issued on the 15th of each month.
THE LIST:
An An (35) / probable high blood pressure. The oldest male panda in captivity; Ocean Park, Hong Kong; his partner Jia Jia, the oldest ever panda under human care and a female, died at age 38 in 2016.
Ann Shulgin (91). Author, lay therapist; born in New Zealand; explored the use of psychedelic drugs for alleviating mental distress.
Billy Al Bengston (88) / natural causes. Painter; hard-edge abstractions.
Brian O’Doherty (94). Artist and writer, performance artist; born in Ireland. From Hyperallergic: “O’Doherty exited a world arguably more in sync with his embrace of disciplinary multiplicity, complex identity, and language dissolution than the post-Minimalist generation he is most associated with. . . . a mind so sparkling to the very end that it seemed he might live forever.”
Carol Caroompas (76) / alzheimer’s. Artist; according to art critic David Pagel, her work was “abrasive, violent, and sexual. There was viciousness, but it was also sweet, loving and true.”
*Claes Oldenburg (93) / recuperating from hip surgery; didn’t go well. Sculptor; born in Stockholm, moved to Chicago when he was twelve.
Dame Angela Lansbury (96) / “died in her sleep.” Actress, film, stage; most famous for her role as writer Jessica Fletcher in the hit series “Murder She Wrote.”
*Dame Hilary Mantel (70) / stroke. Writer; most famous for her Wolf Hall trilogy; wrote seventeen books.
Dan Wieden (77). Advertising maverick; started in Portland, OR with the agency Wieden + Kennedy; famous for the “Just Do It” Nike campaign; agency expanded to New York, Tokyo, and London.
Dennis Nyback (69) / cancer. Film archivist.
Diana Kennedy (99). British food writer, author; famous for her Mexican cuisine. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th8dMWlcMng
Gallagher (76) / massive organ failure (numerous heart attacks). Comedian; most famous for his use of the hand-made “Sledge ‘O Matic” on watermelons; degree in chemical engineering.
*George Booth (96). New Yorker cartoonist; started drawing cartoons at age three and a half; considered “legendary” for his dry sense of humor [Jason Chatfield]; in WWII he was a cartoonist for the Marine’s publication Leatherneck. See https://michaelmaslin.com/george-booth-1926-2022/ and/or https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/nathan-fitch-the-new-yorker-drawing-life-animation-240122
George Johanson (94). Painter, printmaker, teacher.
George Perez (67) /pancreatic cancer. Comic book artist who “redefined Wonder Woman.”
Gregory Granon (73). Painter; painted on glass; women a favorite subject; quoted as saying he “simply paints women as they are.”
Hiram Maristany (77). Photographer, author; documented life in Spanish Harlem.
*Issey Miyake (84) / liver cancer. Japanese fashion designer; love his work.
Jean-Luc Godard (91) / assisted suicide, “multiple invalidating illnesses.” French-Swiss film director; https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122627543/film-director-jean-luc-godard-of-the-french-new-wave-has-died-at-91?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social For a peek at “Breathless” (1960) that changed filmmaking, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCDEAu4R8hA
Jesse Powell (51). R&B singer; his big hit “You” that made #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996 and is still played and performed.
Julie Mancini (73) / lung cancer. Literary arts advocate.
Lee Bontecue (94). Amazing sculptor and printmaker.
Lily Safra (87). Significant art collector; born in Brazil.
Loretta Lynn (90). Country music singer, songwriter; transformed country music to include a female orientation; feminist; most famous for writing and singing “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Louise Fletcher (88). Immortalized the character Nurse Ratched in the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” based on Ken Kesey’s novel; prequel series “Ratched” developed for Netflix. See https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/07/louise-fletcher-nurse-ratched-interview for how Kesey came up with the idea.
Lourdes Grobot (81). Photographer; Mexican; especially famous for her photographs of wrestling performances.
Margaret Keane (94) / heart failure. Artist; did the big-eyed, mostly sad children; her husband took credit for painting them initially; Tim Burton did a movie about her; her work Tomorrow, Forever was in the 1964 World’s Fair and taken down for being “tasteless hack work.” See https://www.keane-eyes.com/product/tomorrow-forever-2/
Mary Obering (85) / natural causes. Abstract painter, geometric abstractions; often used gold leaf, encaustic and tempera.
Miss. Tic. (66). French street artist.
Neal Adams (80) / complications from sepsis. Legendary comic book artist.
Nicholas (Nick) Nemeroff (32). Stand-up comedian; Canadian.
*Paula Rego (87). Portuguese painter; feminist; figurative art.
Peter Brook (97). Theater director, author; Marat Sade.
Peter Schjeldahl (80) / lung cancer. Longtime New Yorker art critic; especially loved painterly art.
Philip Pearlstein (98). Painter; excelled at painting unromanticized views of the human body; said, “I have presented the figure for itself, allowed it its own dignity as a form among other forms in nature.” Some of his work reminds me of Portland, Oregon’s Paul Rutz.
*Pierre Soulages (102). Painter; French; “painter of black”; investigated blacks and their reflections; did 100 stained glass windows for the Sainte-Foy de Conques abbey, 1987-94.
Ritzi Jacobi (80) / “after a long illness.” Romanian fabric sculptor.
Rommy Hunt-Revson (78). Night club singer, pianist, inventor of the Scrunchie. NASA astronaut Pamela Melroy wore a blue Scrunchie to space; it is now part of the Smithsonian collection.
Ron Zimmerman (64) / cancer. Marvel comics writer, film/TV producer and stand-up comedian.
Sacheen Littlefeather (75) / breast cancer. (Original name: Marie Louise Cruz.) Activist for Native Americans; big debut performed onstage by refusing, for Marlon Brando, his Oscar award in 1973. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XggxxJpyrsw Sacheen documentary, 2021, “Breaking the Silence.”
*Sam Gilliam (88) / kidney failure. Artist, abstractionist.
Silke Otto-Knapp (52) / ovarian cancer. Watercolorist; painted on canvas; born in Germany; professor of drawing and painting at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture.
Spider Webb (78). Tattoo artist, activist.
Virginia Dwan (90) / cancer. Significant art supporter, gallerist and patron.
The highlighted 2021 tribute group was selected from end-of-year this-is-who-we-lost-this-year postings from various news sources. (I also discovered I could’ve gone to Neil Genzlinger, prolific obituary writer for the New York Times, as a source for all deaths cultural.)
This year, 2022, the second for the Death Series, I elected to make my own end-of-year list of notable deaths. I filed notices of death as they were published throughout the year—the ones that seemed interesting and/or admirable. I amassed 75 files. I did not include The Queen and some other biggies since the media efficiently saturated them.
And as most of you are aware, currently, since Covid and its restrictions, inspiration for my artworks generally comes from using online source quotes or books rather than real life encounters.
The more demanding part of the 2021 death series proved to be (not surprisingly) that not all the amazing dead people used a visual language. That is, for me to get an image generated—from what I learned of the person online and mostly from quotes—I generally prefer a verbal/visual prompt. For example: rapper DMX is quoted as saying, “Right, wrong, good, bad, heaven, hell. I think that is the theme of my life. I think you have to know both in order to honestly choose one.” And so we have two abstract canvases expressing Both Sides of the Fence.
Sometimes I used personal information as compositional elements. For example: Betty White’s tribute shows hot dogs, fries, and stairs. She said these were her favorite foods and she used the stairs in her 2-story home as exercise. The mustard and ketchup are decorative.
A note about death certification: why or how the person died
According to an article (updated 9/14/2022) written by Kelsey Borresen for HUFFPOST, “90% of the deaths in the USA are death by natural causes.” Borresen continues, “A natural death is one that occurs due solely to an internal disease process in the body. . . cancer, heart disease, stroke or diabetes would fall under the ‘natural’ umbrella.”
Yet on a death certificate, cause of death [the agent] may differ from manner of death [how].
“Manner of death is a classification of the causes based on how death occurs, which includes natural, accident, suicide, homicide and undetermined,” Dr. Cheng-Ying Ho, associate professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told HuffPost.”
So a toilet falling from the sky and striking a person dead is not a natural death and is considered quite accidental. You may also have heard of death by misadventure. This coroner’s term originated in Britain to indicate death due to risk willingly incurred—a preventable death. As each state, county and country has their own rules for determining cause and manner of death, we can safely assume it is a variable and perhaps not important to note publicly. It is data significant for statistical purposes.
For the 2022 death series I am presenting my alphabetical list (by first name) of some notables who are no longer present on this earthly plane of reality as we know it. See if our interests match or collide. As studio work progresses I will reference some of these, yet probably not all. A few links are offered. Brief quotes are from sourced materials.
The number following their name indicates age at death. This is followed by what did them in, if reported. (See above paragraphs about death certification.) An asterisk suggests a good chance for visual development. The people I can image from quotes will be developed over time. Stay tuned with Studio Practice: New Works issued on the 15th of each month.
THE LIST:
An An (35) / probable high blood pressure. The oldest male panda in captivity; Ocean Park, Hong Kong; his partner Jia Jia, the oldest ever panda under human care and a female, died at age 38 in 2016.
Ann Shulgin (91). Author, lay therapist; born in New Zealand; explored the use of psychedelic drugs for alleviating mental distress.
Billy Al Bengston (88) / natural causes. Painter; hard-edge abstractions.
Brian O’Doherty (94). Artist and writer, performance artist; born in Ireland. From Hyperallergic: “O’Doherty exited a world arguably more in sync with his embrace of disciplinary multiplicity, complex identity, and language dissolution than the post-Minimalist generation he is most associated with. . . . a mind so sparkling to the very end that it seemed he might live forever.”
Carol Caroompas (76) / alzheimer’s. Artist; according to art critic David Pagel, her work was “abrasive, violent, and sexual. There was viciousness, but it was also sweet, loving and true.”
*Claes Oldenburg (93) / recuperating from hip surgery; didn’t go well. Sculptor; born in Stockholm, moved to Chicago when he was twelve.
Dame Angela Lansbury (96) / “died in her sleep.” Actress, film, stage; most famous for her role as writer Jessica Fletcher in the hit series “Murder She Wrote.”
*Dame Hilary Mantel (70) / stroke. Writer; most famous for her Wolf Hall trilogy; wrote seventeen books.
Dan Wieden (77). Advertising maverick; started in Portland, OR with the agency Wieden + Kennedy; famous for the “Just Do It” Nike campaign; agency expanded to New York, Tokyo, and London.
Dennis Nyback (69) / cancer. Film archivist.
Diana Kennedy (99). British food writer, author; famous for her Mexican cuisine. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th8dMWlcMng
Gallagher (76) / massive organ failure (numerous heart attacks). Comedian; most famous for his use of the hand-made “Sledge ‘O Matic” on watermelons; degree in chemical engineering.
*George Booth (96). New Yorker cartoonist; started drawing cartoons at age three and a half; considered “legendary” for his dry sense of humor [Jason Chatfield]; in WWII he was a cartoonist for the Marine’s publication Leatherneck. See https://michaelmaslin.com/george-booth-1926-2022/ and/or https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/nathan-fitch-the-new-yorker-drawing-life-animation-240122
George Johanson (94). Painter, printmaker, teacher.
George Perez (67) /pancreatic cancer. Comic book artist who “redefined Wonder Woman.”
Gregory Granon (73). Painter; painted on glass; women a favorite subject; quoted as saying he “simply paints women as they are.”
Hiram Maristany (77). Photographer, author; documented life in Spanish Harlem.
*Issey Miyake (84) / liver cancer. Japanese fashion designer; love his work.
Jean-Luc Godard (91) / assisted suicide, “multiple invalidating illnesses.” French-Swiss film director; https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122627543/film-director-jean-luc-godard-of-the-french-new-wave-has-died-at-91?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social For a peek at “Breathless” (1960) that changed filmmaking, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCDEAu4R8hA
Jesse Powell (51). R&B singer; his big hit “You” that made #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996 and is still played and performed.
Julie Mancini (73) / lung cancer. Literary arts advocate.
Lee Bontecue (94). Amazing sculptor and printmaker.
Lily Safra (87). Significant art collector; born in Brazil.
Loretta Lynn (90). Country music singer, songwriter; transformed country music to include a female orientation; feminist; most famous for writing and singing “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Louise Fletcher (88). Immortalized the character Nurse Ratched in the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” based on Ken Kesey’s novel; prequel series “Ratched” developed for Netflix. See https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/07/louise-fletcher-nurse-ratched-interview for how Kesey came up with the idea.
Lourdes Grobot (81). Photographer; Mexican; especially famous for her photographs of wrestling performances.
Margaret Keane (94) / heart failure. Artist; did the big-eyed, mostly sad children; her husband took credit for painting them initially; Tim Burton did a movie about her; her work Tomorrow, Forever was in the 1964 World’s Fair and taken down for being “tasteless hack work.” See https://www.keane-eyes.com/product/tomorrow-forever-2/
Mary Obering (85) / natural causes. Abstract painter, geometric abstractions; often used gold leaf, encaustic and tempera.
Miss. Tic. (66). French street artist.
Neal Adams (80) / complications from sepsis. Legendary comic book artist.
Nicholas (Nick) Nemeroff (32). Stand-up comedian; Canadian.
*Paula Rego (87). Portuguese painter; feminist; figurative art.
Peter Brook (97). Theater director, author; Marat Sade.
Peter Schjeldahl (80) / lung cancer. Longtime New Yorker art critic; especially loved painterly art.
Philip Pearlstein (98). Painter; excelled at painting unromanticized views of the human body; said, “I have presented the figure for itself, allowed it its own dignity as a form among other forms in nature.” Some of his work reminds me of Portland, Oregon’s Paul Rutz.
*Pierre Soulages (102). Painter; French; “painter of black”; investigated blacks and their reflections; did 100 stained glass windows for the Sainte-Foy de Conques abbey, 1987-94.
Ritzi Jacobi (80) / “after a long illness.” Romanian fabric sculptor.
Rommy Hunt-Revson (78). Night club singer, pianist, inventor of the Scrunchie. NASA astronaut Pamela Melroy wore a blue Scrunchie to space; it is now part of the Smithsonian collection.
Ron Zimmerman (64) / cancer. Marvel comics writer, film/TV producer and stand-up comedian.
Sacheen Littlefeather (75) / breast cancer. (Original name: Marie Louise Cruz.) Activist for Native Americans; big debut performed onstage by refusing, for Marlon Brando, his Oscar award in 1973. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XggxxJpyrsw Sacheen documentary, 2021, “Breaking the Silence.”
*Sam Gilliam (88) / kidney failure. Artist, abstractionist.
Silke Otto-Knapp (52) / ovarian cancer. Watercolorist; painted on canvas; born in Germany; professor of drawing and painting at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture.
Spider Webb (78). Tattoo artist, activist.
Virginia Dwan (90) / cancer. Significant art supporter, gallerist and patron.