My Friend, the Billionaire

In New Orleans a lot of liquor is consumed. It is a good place for it. You can walk around the city with a drink or bottle and not lose your buzz. I was introduced to the man who owned the liquor distributorship that supplied most of New Orleans, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston and some other cities. He commissioned several unusual Board Room Portraits. He wanted them to be... Well look for yourself.

Bill isa good natured man with a great business sense and he was a lot of fun to work with. He was going to open up a super big beer distributorship in New Orleans with Mr. Jim Bob Moffett as a partner. He had an idea for the painting. It would be large and in oils but cartoonish and realistic where it counted. He showed me a pewter keychain with a figure on the steps of a streetcar. The figure had long shoes and a small body. He would be that figure and Jim Bob and his son would be driving the streetcar. They would be uptown on St. Charles Avenue, going past Tulane University. Unfortunately I do not have high resolution pictures.

For another city he wanted the Board Room Portrait to be the directors depicted as the founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence.

They actually looked pretty good. We did another of them for Houston with the same group as hotel workers in a bar at the top of the hotel with the giant Mixmaster Interstate Interchange showing through the giant window behind them.

Another one for Texas depicted them as characters after the Battle of San Jacinto when Houston and the Texicans made Santa Anna sign over the territory to them under the threat of hanging right then and there.

It was a big company.

Board Room Portrait, oil on canvas, 40x48 inches