You can e mail me f r e d at f r e d h a r p e r dot com. But only if you need me for a job or to hang out and draw at the coffee shop. I can answer questions etc. They may be total lies or just completely wrong, but they will be answers. Really hard questions might take three years.

Here’s the cover for the NY Observer that came out this week!

for NY Observer.

Obama Hood.

I make a pretty good living making art. Coming from the almost mid west, more accurately western Pennsylvania, my teachers always gave us kids this hope that we could achieve something big. Anyone could be president, fire chief, CEO of McDonalds , or whatever. By high school things began to dissolve in to the reality that we would go to college to get jobs that might give us a decent middle class living wage so we could buy a house, have 2.5 kids, a car or two and be grateful for our 2 week vacation. The day or two we’d get off on holidays would be special too. The groundwork for public office needed to be laid during high school. No one ever did this. You might hit the lotto before you get a shot at being CEO of a giant company. Most people are not making more than $100,000 let alone a million!

I know it’s a matter of perspective, but I don’t see a problem to go back to how millionaires were taxed in the 60′s and 70′s.

Elizabeth Warren needs to raise a gazillion dollars to run against her competitor. This is an example of what is wrong with the political system. How can you say I’ll stop wasteful spending when they do nothing about the spending needed to wage a political campaign. It’s a bold face lie when they claim they are serious about cutting the national budget. I read an article about how a run for president will cost one billion dollars this election. Here in New York City, Bloomberg out spent the nearest rival around 3 to 1 to buy his mayoral position. Things like this are obviously blocking better people that aren’t millionaires (or billionaires) from being in the government. As one of my favorite Onion headlines state, “Politicians win the election”. Not you or me.

Elizabeth Warren

Yes, I’ve been pretty busy this month. Lots of rush jobs. New York City is as lively as ever. Most recent, my studio is very close to Zucotti Park in Lower Manhattan. While working on a job for Wall Street Journal (late night as usual!) St Patrick’s Day also coincided with the 6 month mark for Occupy Wall Street. Out of curiosity I walked along with a march that ended in front of the NY Stock Exchange in the early afternoon. There might have been 400+ people and the cops broke things up as soon as everyone clogged Nassau St. and Wall St. I went back to work. The mood seemed pretty mellow. There seemed to be more than enough cops and everything was pretty orderly. My girl friend went out around 11:30pm to look around after we heard a lot of sirens and shouting. The NYPD had begun clearing the park. She saw a woman who was beaten by cops, suffered broken ribs and laid on the ground convulsing in some sort of seizure for about 20 minutes until they finally let an ambulance in. The NYPD’s excuse for the crack down was people brought tents. The tents turned out to be balloons that where made in a tent form. But they were filled with helium and clearly BALLOONS ON STRINGS. So that meant it was time to beat people up for expressing their legal right to free speech. Nice. I had a deadline. Sometimes it’s really hard to work when you see so much that is messed up right under your window.

Detail 2

Detail

Euro Crisis

It’s not until July or August, but here are some detail shots. I worked on a nice full sheet of water color paper, 22″x30″

detail

I’ll be painting at the Philadelphia Tattoo Festival on Friday (Feb 10th) On Sat I’ll be at Last Rites Gallery for a charity painting event. I’ll be collaborating with the talented artist Anthony Pontius whose work I absolutely love. The paintings will be auctioned off after for ICAF.If you are in New York, please come see the Last Rites event. There will be a bar and about 10 – 20 artists also painting to watch.

A detail

I have a rash of Etsy. You can buy a print of suggest one from my website that I can put up on my “rash”. I guess that means Pay Pal is the “salve” that can help my rash. Please enjoy!

One of a bunch of images available on my Etsy

Angouleme is a small town. I think I remember someone telling me it was started around 600 AD probably as a fort of some kind. Now they have really fun graffiti that happens for the comic book festival.

I only want to draw everything here.

After a busy and frantic week of work my girl and I will be going to Paris since we worked through the holidays.

For The Week Magazine way back in 2011.