Ming and the mask

This is a mask I made for my son when he still did Halloween. Actually it may have comprised the entire costume. He came to me with a Moorcock paperback, I think Hawkmoon, and pointed to the dragon-wolf head on the cover and said he wanted to be that for Halloween. This is what we did every year. He would come up with an idea and I would go into the studio for several days to a week and emerge with the solution.

Ming

Ming was one of my cats. Today we had to put him to sleep-he had acute kidney failure. I use to go out into the garden and call to him and he would run in that cat-flow way, in a series of fluid bounds to my side. He would look up and lift one paw, his face full of light: the gold eyes in the orange and white fur. Ming means bright in Mandarin. I was totally smitten. I just loved him completely. I use to call him King Ming. He liked that.
This painting is called Wolff & Ming Late at Night. When I would get up in the middle of the night to pee I would think about death. After a while I started to think that I had a date with Death by the toilet every night. The minute I thought that I knew it was a painting. So it became, except I put Ming in with me. In the painting he is unfazed by Death's flamboyant appearance and under lit wing. He is totally cool about it all. I hope it was really like that for him.

garden in B & W

7 am is still dark. Almost 8 and the light is a blued grey. The summer is being pummeled into the streets by rain, which is straining to bring autumn into the peculiar state of this late October. The ink brush painting above is my garden upstate. The one I walk through on the way to my studio. It isn't an exact representation. The mimosa tree (or tartuffala tree as I call it) on the left is actually at least 20 feet tall--and the hummingbirds did hover there. The buddeleia bush with its attendent monarch-huge in the forground-is the singular stand-in for the many (pink-violet, white and coming next year: deep purple).
When I'd wander out there I would call for my cat, Ming, who would come bounding, dog-like to my side, and lift up his face and one paw to greet me.
So the rain delivers its summer memories as it dashes them to the asphalt.