For three years, I sang in a bar - just me and my guitar amidst the quiet and the rowdy, the depressed and the happy. If I sang something they knew, they joined in. If they didn't know the song, they kept talking or continued to stare into their chosen drink. When I took a break, they talked - about anything and everything.
This painting reminded me of those days and I thought of Billy Joel's Piano Man - the embattled aspirations of the people around the bar and how much easier it was to become another person in the dusky-dark of the place.
They Come to Sing the Blues is a satirical look at the people in the bar, singing with the piano man - inhibitions dropped, personalities changed, singing to another life.
This painting used a limited palette of gray-green, black and white acrylic on watercolor paper and was created with a brush and a palette knife.