Bright Terrible Spirit

Priscilla Weymouth, London, 1966.

“Fiona Hampton (Fannie Kreutzer), famed for her roles in historical photoplays, including ‘The Doomed Queen’ (Anne Boleyn), ‘Stage of Tragedy’ (Mary Todd Lincoln) and ‘Christina the Conquerer,’ a forerunner to Greta Garbo’s later portrayal of the 17th century Swedish queen. As with so many of her contemporaries, Hampton’s career did not survive the rise of the talkies, although she did have a striking comeback role as an aged fence (‘Connie the Crone’) hawking stolen goods in a Bowery saloon in the 1952 B movie, ‘Dark and Deadly Love,’ now considered a film noir classic. Her last screen appearance was a brief cameo in a 1978 episode of ‘The Love Boat,’ which had been scripted by her grandson, Henry Kreutzer. She died in 1980 at the age of 83.” Pencil sketch, digital paint.

Harry Brzezinski at St Mary’s Church, Witney, Oxfordshire, December 2018. Pencil sketch, digital paint.

“‘Did I kill him? I could have. I wanted him dead. What he’s done to me deserves no mercy. If the gun had been in my hand, I would’ve pulled the trigger. But it wasn’t. So I didn’t. Sorry, cop. I may be going to hell, but not for this.’ From ‘Body Blow,’ 1953.” Pencil sketch.

Portrait of Ruth Gower, Knoxville, Tennessee, May 1981. Pencil sketch, digital paint.

“Dorothea Blankenship, a younger contemporary and friend of Harlem Renaissance poets like Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson. When the Depression devastated the Harlem literary scene, she returned to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and worked as a schoolteacher. But in 1937, she moved to Paris, where she flourished as a translator and art critic. She joined the Resistance in 1942, and was killed in a shoot-out with Nazi soldiers in 1944 during an attempt to sabotage a German troop train. The lines below are from her 1927 book, ‘Nothing Left of the Harvest.'” Pencil sketch, digital paint.

“Sweet wine, terrible power,
Secret intelligence, a desirable place
To hide, in the hollow of the light.
Stay close to the body, stay masked
In the evening, tell people you’re dreaming,
Let no one know what you’ve become,
mysteriously transformed
into a mysterious state of eternity.”

Digital ink, digital paint.

“Club Morocco is proud to present the fabulous heart-stopper and chart-topper, Angelica Noyola, in an exclusive two-week engagement! Backed by an all-star band under the direction of jazz legend Lester Pruitt, Angelica will set your soul on fire with a selection of her greatest hits and her unique renditions of classic tunes. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see one of our era’s greatest vocal artists in the lush, intimate settings of the famous Club Morocco. Book now, avoid the rush!” New York City, September 1947. 

Pencil sketch, digital paint.

“The mystery of consciousness is key, but I think its resolution is beyond us. Neuroscience can tell us many near-miraculous things, but it has not and I think it cannot explain how these biochemical charges and protein exchanges in the brain give rise to the world, to the universe that we perceive – and experience – with our consciousness. In any case, even in the purest physical sense, the brain is not the sole producer of consciousness. The entire body – every atom of it – is a receptor of whatever makes up our awareness and experience of Being. The entire body – plus the interaction of every one of its elements with the outside world, at every point, from the quantum level to the cosmic. Try to sketch a tidy, nailed-down schema of such infinitude!”

Jeremiah Dalton (1824-1882), XII Corps, Union Army. “To go against everything I’ve known, against everything everyone around me believes, against everything the churchmen preach, against everything my father and his fathers taught, against traditions and beliefs going back hundreds, thousands of years, evoking scorn, mockery, anger, disgust and violence from my own society, my own family – to do this and to believe that I am right and everyone around me is wrong, that I am not mad, deluded, corrupted, but that they are … This is the painful course of my life. Yet I will bear it out to the end, whatever the cost.”