'Death Car Girls' depicts the tragic mishaps involving Isadora Duncan, Jacqueline Onassis, Jayne Mansfield, Grace de Monaco, and Jackson Pollock but it explores a morbid fascination with death and celebrity, the nature of gossip and bad taste, and the taboo of pleasure derived from someone else’s pain. “We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of others.”

Look for: the bottle of "Kligman Gin" by the side of the road - Pollock being drunk on gin and Ruth Kligman the original "death car girl" who survived that crash; Grace Kelly's tiara, the children of Isadora who died tragically in a car crash years before her, the rope Isadora's lover used to hang himself, Isdora's scarf about to wrap around the back wheel of the Bugatti, the daisy that covers its face before the tragedy, Jayne Mansfield's skid marks into oblivion, the Kennedy death car.

Oil on Canvas, 48" x 56"

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Portrait of Isadora Duncan

The worlds of various insane people collide into one in 'Twenty Mile Zoned.' My great aunt Frieda survived the holocaust, smuggled money out of Germany in cakes of soap and had many amazing experiences is depicted here toward the end of her life. She is performing elaborate funerals for cockroaches roadside during a medically induced episode of madness. Above her is a billboard that reads "Rita Hayworth lost her mind" (Rita had advanced Alzheimer's). Speeding by driving on the wrong side of the road is a psychotic Rosemary Clooney who challenged God to prove his love to her by letting her survive that reckless stunt.  

In the foreground singer Dory Previn is being pulled over not for speeding but for screaming in a twenty-mile zone as recalled in her most famous song. The passenger is Soon Yi Previn. Mr. Whisper (the name Dory called the imaginary voices in her head) is visible and warns "Beware of young girls." Beware of Young Girls happens to title Dory’s song about good friend Mia Farrow who stole and then married Dory's husband André. Coincidentally Mia and André Previn's adopted daughter Soon Yi eventually stole Mia's own longtime lover Woody Allen away from her. Beware of young girls, indeed. Over head is the London bound plane Dory cracked up on. In the back seat is the Mad Hatter eating a live canary sandwich (one of my Dad's first patients at the asylum did that). And yes, there is more. In the background are my parents as bride and groom because they met in a psychiatric hospital where they both worked. But my message is more about tolerance than insanity. No matter how differently we interpret reality, no matter what our world view or morality is, we all still exist in the same place together...in a twenty mile zone.

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The 10 of Hearts Was Good!

I love to play bridge and sometimes I have allowed the game to creep into some of my paintings. The title was once screamed out by the dummy (Steven Tompkins) to his partner (Harvey Hauswirth - "Harveaux") when he lost a hand in no trumps that he could have easily made had he remembered that "The 10 of Hearts Was Good! "

Oil on canvas, 42" x 52"

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Ponce De Lyon in Search of the Mainstream

This is a visual metaphor depicting how I've felt invisible my whole life. From childhood I knew I was different, a member of a various marginalized groups that I had to keep secret. But did not have that experience recognized or acknowleged because of my privledged status provided by an assumed race, class and health. Outsiders assumed my identity and experience as something I had no connection to, I knew I was not at all a part of mainstream but something else much more isolated, complex, undesirable, and precious.

Latin Ponce de Lyon and his mate examine three naked white men. He finds a bit of diversity among the genitals of the white subjects: one sporting an erection, one circumcised and the other intact who is stripping off his shirt with the American Apple Pie print symbolizing he is not who we might think he is, based on what we see. Identity markers do not and cannot explain who someone is and nudity really never reveals much, it can tell you less about who a person is than their own clothes do. Flamboyant Ponce de Lyon and his very camp banana clad mate never found the Fountain of Youth, and looking here towards me they won't find the mainstream they are expecting either.

Piercings, the shirt, a wristwatch and cheeky banana skirt mix the metaphor past with modern times to tell the story.

Oil on Canvas, 50" x 60"

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Rough Trade

The Snowy Drive

My house in winter. I can see the influence of 2 painters in this work, my mother and Samuel Rosenburg. One of many in my series of western roads.

*An x-ray would reveal a completely different painting underneath the surface."

Exhibited at the Colorado State Capitol Building.

Through the Looking Glass

'Through the Looking Glass' compares the career of singer Yma Sumac to the story of Alice in Wonderland in order to illustrate the power we have to create our own destiny. Claiming to be a descendant of Inca Kings and having learned to sing by imitating birds while wandering Peruvian jungles as a girl, Miss Sumac gained fame exploiting her colorful heritage in a full four octave range. However, rumors persisted that she was born in Brooklyn purely of European descent with the name Amy Camus, which spelled backwards becomes Yma Sumac. My painting depicts the rumored young Amy gazing at her reflection as the mature Yma in her bathroom mirror. Elements of the bathroom are transformed into the Peruvian jungle in the mirror and even her name Amy is reflected backwards as Yma demonstrating since we can create our own reality thus we create too our own reflection. So unlike Alice, we do not have to go through the looking glass to find another world, all we must do is invent it. Therefore anyone can be an Inca Princess, or anything else that they strive to be.

Oil on Canvas, 48" x 56"

Portrait of Yma Sumac

Nick Limansky's wonderful biography of Yma Sumac On the CD, Nick gives a track by track critical discussion of all of Yma's recordings. Because the book is written by a singer, it adds a perspective and understanding of her talent and craft that makes it a particularly good read for a non-singer, but a fan like me. Did I mention the glorious cover ????????????????

 

 

Yma's own iconic Inca Sun God bracelet is happily now in my possession 25 years after creating this painting. The Sun God appears behind Yma in my painting and its image was associated with her throughout her career.

Tug of War

A young tree reaches to find its own light.

3 Attics.

A tribute to Anne Frank, her step sister Eva Schloss, Eva's artistic brother Heinz, their father Erich Geiringer and the good in all of us. The painting celebrates the difference we (famous and not) make in the world without knowing.

Young Heinz's precious paintings were found after the holocaust hidden under the floor in the attic where he had been hiding until he was taken away and killed. At the death camp, the teenaged painter and poet lamented that he would be totally forgotten and his life wouldn't have mattered. But his father explained how much he had already mattered a great deal because of the impact he had made to others without even knowing by just being such a good person. Neither survived, but Eva and her mom did and her mom later married family friend Otto Frank, Anne's father.

My painting is a collage of space that most resembles elements of the Frank's secret annex attic but Heinz's cherished paintings are shown rolled up for safe keeping under the floor boards of this attic. One of his actual surviving paintings is of a similar attic space and here is labeled "attic" in German on one of the hidden canvas rolls on the lower right. His name also is partially legible on the rolls. Depicting elements of 3 attics rather than one, creates a visual reminder of those millions who were lost, not just those from one attic, and the contributions they did make, we all make, just by being.

The reason the attics are shrouded by night is to illuminate Frank's quote:  "...if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”  I wanted to show the view from the confined secret space out into the infinite, as inspired by a visit to Yad Vashem, the holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem. As you pass through the exhibit on your journey through the holocaust, the space and walls close in on you by design and then at the end there is a sweeping view cantilevered out to the vast sweeping view of the beyond and you are left changed. 

The bareness of the attic space contemplates questions: "What is left after leaving, and what is revealed when secrets come to light?"

Visiting the Annex space and later hearing Eva speak in person about her incredible survival story in Boulder in 2019 were both transformative experiences for me. I finished this painting just 2 weeks after family member and survivor Jerry Rawicki died. His too is an incredible story, as is my uncle Henry Mark's. They all are, which is why the painting is not one literal space, but many.

Debuted at Celestal Review Cycle #6 https://celestalreview.org

Review by Maggie Sava:

Alpern uses pronounced brushstrokes and vibrant lines of color to create an lively atmosphere. Much like Van Gogh’s approach in his paintings of interior scenes, Alpern forgoes accuracy in perspective in exchange for emotive expression. As a result, feelings of presence and absence, freedom and captivity, and memory and obscurity push at one another. The artist cleverly depicts the notion of interiority not only as an architectural experience, but a mental and emotional one as well.

https://thedairy.org/vessel-daria-denver-art-review/