This is Oscar as quite a handsome young man sitting nude in his true maleness. Of course my mother needed nude models to paint from and my father was it. Perched on his arm is the swan. I was brought to them, not by a proverbial stork, but my a fantastical swan.

Here I am home on furlough from military school at age fourteen. Gene now makes me pose both morning and afternoon in the good light, and maybe the next morning also to finish the painting. Some girlfriends have said I look incredibly sad here. Note the flower in my button hole of the military shirt. The ears stick out. The face is turned inward on itself. I don't deny this is me at that age.

I perceive this painting as my mother showing me her feeling understanding of me which she could not directly express to me. Gene Derwood has a way of making the person absolutely still in her painting. Her portraits of Dylan Thomas are that way also, and painted around the same time. You can see I have a lot bottled up inside of me. Six years later Gene Derwood will be dead. Life is already slowing down for her. She paints from her bed where she rests all day and drinks sour milk. She does not stop smoking, and smoking can kill.

This is me and my father in 1939, obviously summertime. The world is about to go crazy in another world war. From the lack of clothes we see that it gets pretty damn hot in summer in New York City. One of the reasons they sent me off to boarding school at age six was to get me out of New York City. Notice how when I was young I seemed to look like Dylan Thomas to Gene Derwood. She did portraits of him as well with lots of hair and big pop-out eyes. Note the bookcase, the typewriter, the drawers, the cigarette in Oscar's hand, the toy boat on the floor, the couch, the cushion to sit on for me. And the book Oscar would be reading if my mother would not want him to pose. This is practically the only painting made of me and my father together. He preferred to be portrayed with famous poets more than with his own son.