Mustard Soup

"I have rarely commissioned works from him, preferring to buy from existing piece on display in his studio. One exception to this is in the "I Will Stop Smoking Series." In 2006, I simply asked him to paint a cigarette smoking a cigarette (Fig. 26). I was as interested in how he was going to handle the text, as much as I was with the image itself. Here the filter became the head of the cigarette with a rather elegant hand holding the cigarette being smoked. The text, in at least five different scripts, is more expansive than most in the series, "CIGARETTE SMOKING IS NOT / sweet / it causes / CANCER / it really / KILLS / Even there are writing / on the cigarette box / 'Cigarette smoking can be harmful / to your health' but why do I continue smoking? I think I am under a spell."