"Lonesome Dove" contemporary figurative painting

I painted this sometime in the early 1990's after college when I was struggling with debt and unemployment and uncertainty and the disappointment of knowing I would never be able to have enough money or freedom to pursue my art.  Letting debt or unemployment interfere with an art career might sound absurd to almost anyone who attended art school, but I didn't grow up in suburban America.  I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, and the economic uncertainty of that place was always with me.  I had no middle-class aspirations, but I did want a few dollars in the bank, so I allowed corporate America to waste a few more years of my life.

But at night, and sometimes on the weekends, I would suddenly find myself mixing concrete in my bedroom...

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 Website and images copyright 2004 Joe Moorman.  Not to be reproduced without express permission.