Barack Obama

Here's a portrait of one of my favorite U.S. presidents, Barack Obama, created on a vintage map of Hawaii (where he was born). This is part of a series called World Tour - in which I use pages from an old atlas as canvases - painting images relating to the place on each map.

Prints are available here!

That's me holding the original framed portrait of one of my heroes.

Political Games

I've been creating an ongoing series - combining portraits of famous political figures with board-games which they might be associated with. Here's a consolidation of the portraits thus far.

Sarah Palin Scrabble

A few Scrabble words associated with Sarah Palin.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney in a House of Cards.

Portrait of President Obama on a chess board.

 Portrait of presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, on an Operation game-board

Portrait of Fidel Castro on a set of Dominoes

A different sort of House Of Cards...with a young Queen Elizabeth II

Thanks for visiting.

You can view a big gallery of my personal projects here!

Presidential Chess

If President Obama was a board-game, which one would he be? Given all the strategic moves which must be weighed in the complex Middle East, I imagine he'd be Chess. There can be unintended consequences to any action our president takes - so I don't envy his responsibilities. But I admire Mr. Obama greatly for his keen intellect and steady leadership.

"In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on 

all elements of our power - including strong and principled diplomacy."

- President Barack Obama

Speak Softly...

Here's the first piece in a series based on famous quotes about politics. It was inspired by the words of our 26th U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt. He was referring to U.S. foreign policy in his time - but this "Big Stick" philosophy strikes me as relevant to our present administration's implementation of drones in counter-terrorism. Below are sketchbook ideas which planted the seed for this illustration.

 “What I think is absolutely true is it’s not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we’re doing the right thing. There has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil. We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counterterrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States.” ~ President Barack Obama

“We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.” ~ Cornel West

If you want to learn more about the pros and cons of the U.S. Drone program,

here's a link to a well-balanced article in the Atlantic, by Mark Bowden.