This painting is a take on formal portraiture. The painting technique is a classic one - I started with an india ink rendering. Then glazes of rose madder, aureolin and cobalt blue layered on top a a terre verts base for the fleash tones. I also used a flake white instead of a more modern white. But the actual composition is a surreal one - a floating window of reality hanging within a blue-black fog. But then the sinister fretting hand is depicted as a glowing supernatural object . In the eyes, the light reflections are in the shape of a Fender Stratocaster.

The subject also plays the modern against the classical. Eric Clapton is a modern hero, a guitar god. We have replaced the audulation that formerly belonged to achievement in politics, sciences and invention with heroes of entertainment. We have turned our minstrels, play actors and jesters into our deities.
This is a portrait of Eric Clapton which is currently hanging in Buddy Guy's Legends blues club in Chicago. Please forgive the multiple puns in the title. It came to me in a flash and stuck. (The god part is from the famous "Clapton is God" graffiti from the 60's. The left side is referred to as the "sinister" side in heraldry and the left hand is the hand which frets the guitar - thus it is sinister and frets about. Thus was born the title.)