Old Drawings

Three drawings dating a few years back, when I was transitioning out of dynamo-ville and into being just plain Keith.

This drawing is called "Dick Lewis Is Watching." It's a watercolor on notebook paper, 8 1/2" x 11", drawn in 2006. The story behind it is this: I used to see commercials on TV growing up on Long Island for Newmark & Lewis, which was like Best Buy or Circuit City before those places existed. The deal with this place was they had the lowest prices because Dick Lewis (he's the Lewis of Newmark & Lewis) was watching out for all of us - finding low, low prices on any appliance or electronic device you wanted. Their slogan was "Dick Lewis Is Watching," which always had this creepy 1984-esque quality to me. It almost made me feel like I did when I believed in Santa Claus, but felt funny knowing that he watched me all the time deciding if I was bad or good. I was pleased when, after years of being subjected to paranoia inducing Newmark & Lewis commercials, I read the liner notes of Public Enemy's "Yo! Bum Rush The Show" LP which stated "The 1990's are here, so take no shorts (particularly when we know that Dick Lewis is watching)" - which was Chuck D's way of saying "you better watch The Man, because The Man is watching you!"



This drawing is called "SUN" and is ballpoint pen on paper, 8 1/2" x 11", drawn in 2005. It's a page taken from a hand made sketchbook, so there are holes on the left side from where it was once bound. It's one of the last times I drew anything that looked like one of my "dynamo-ville" characters. This sketchbook is filled with lots of therapeutic drawings and writings which I used to help expunge all that was "dynamo-ville" from my head.

This drawing is called "Acieed!" and is ballpoint pen and pencil on newsprint, approximately 7" x 10", from 2005. It's also a page from the aforementioned sketchbook. This drawing actually has three blank pages that are attached to the back of it - it was a cluster of hand cut newsprint pages in the sketchbook but only one page got drawn on and the rest just stuck together at the edge making it that much more interesting. The critter in the drawing is a tanuki, or raccoon dog found in Japanese folklore. Usually statues of tanuki are found outside of temples or noodle shops. They are mischievous, absent minded shape shifters. The word "Acieed!" refers to the refrain in the song "We Call It Acieed" by D-Mob, which was an Acid House anthem in the late 1980s. Honestly, I don't know what the two things have to do with each other.