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Atlantis the Lost Continent

My taste in art is as varied as my taste in books. I read everything from spy thrillers to sword and sorcery and historic novels. Although night city scenes are my usual subject, I find that from time to time I am also compelled to paint an abstract, a subject inspired by pulp novels, or  a fantasy scene such as this, just to keep things fresh.

Caption; A hazy sun shone down through the hot  ash in the air. The City of Atlantis waited as the sacred mountain above grumbled and spewed smoke and volcanic ash into the sky. Birds and animals migrated out of season and the earth trembled and shook as the final countdown to destruction began.

In December my wife, Nancy and I, with our close friends, fellow artist Walt Maes and his wife Toby, attended a musical at this beautiful theater. Instead of the usual winter snow, it was a rainy day in Chicago, and this is how I portrayed it.

As one of the first motion picture palaces whose décor was inspired by the Far East, Chicago’s Oriental Theatre opened to much fanfare on May 8, 1926. The theater eventually fell into disrepair and was closed to the public in 1981. Rescued in 1996, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that the Oriental would be restored to its original grandeur for the presentation of live stage musicals. It was renamed the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1997.

(I have also painted the Chicago Theater and Milwaukee’s Oriental movie theater)