Card Players

This series of paintings of the Card Players has a long history. On the back of one of the six canvases is the date 1989! and I keep changing them as the fellows get older. The style gets looser and I loose the intention of making a likeness. Instead I want the light flooding over the "player's field" (our kitchen table) and the intensity of the game to be the subject. Who is bluffing whom? They are character studies in van Gogh colors. The Potato Eaters painted by van Gogh in the 1880's in the south of Holland was my initial inspiration although those colors are muted. That light pouring over a table where something very Dutch is happening. Here it is also about winning money.
I have put the canvases away for the summer and will get them out in October when these outdoor hard- working men take their places here again on Friday evenings. They have been doing this for 40 years. No one would think of missing the gathering.