Buk RIP Portrait by Sandlin (1 Viewer)

This is my first post - great site. Back in the early 90s I was the feature editor for NYC Street News, a paper sold by crackheads, the deranged and the homeless. I was a big fan of Bukowski since coming across the Rolling Stone article back in the 70s - especially the poem about the doctor's dog getting its ass kicked. When Bukowski died, I contacted John Martin and he gave me permission to run an excerpt from Pulp in Street News. The drawing by David Sandlin ran as the illustration for the article. Sandlin was amazing - not only did he do the drawing gratis, when I asked if I could buy it from him he gave it to me. I think it's a real warm send-off for Buk.
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Thank you, Mark. That's a beautiful drawing with an interesting story to it. Nice how several aspects of Bukowski's writing find their place in the illustration- the horse races, the fire, the women and the drinks. I like the idea of the burning post office the best- it looks like it's screaming in agony. Burn motherfucker, burn.
 
Sandlin is a real character. At the time I knew him, he was dead ringer for the poet Algernon Swinburne. He has a crazy studio in Chinatown. We hit it off at a drunken party in Hoboken and that's probably how I learned he was a Bukowski fan (my memory is dim on that point). His artwork was appearing in magazines like The New Yorker the same time he did the Buk portrait - which is why I was so psyched he'd do something for a small rag like Street News.
 
Hmmmm, very nice.
Pair o dice.
Reminds me of some Middle Age church art.
And isn't that an Edvard Munch painting on your avatar? ;-)
 

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