Cliff had seen an exhibit of my oil paintings, mostly of bars and coffee houses in Manhattan and asked if I would paint his crew in situ in Le Pescadou and to do so as a surprise. This meant the other portrait subjects could not be informed of the painting and therefore would not be available to sit for portraits nor be photographed at Le Pescadou. I accepted what became a monumental challenge - balancing a good painting with portraiture (nine of them) and secrecy.

My first job was to photograph and sketch the restaurant, choosing a time of day and lighting that would make a good painting.

I made dozens hundreds or photos and oil and pencil with watercolor sketches some of which are shown.

Cliff’s job was to "borrow" photos for my use in creating likenesses from everyone’s home.

Not having all the people in the same lighting situation since the reference photos were snapshots shot in different lighting situations in several countries . . . I made a three-dimensional solid modeled computer simulation of Le Pescadou with the lighting I planned to use.

Some more on the underlying aesthetics of the painting - I recently heard Mike Nichols talking about his movie "The Graduate" and amongst the underlying aesthetic touches he used, he had Mrs. Robinson always dressed in some kind of or touch of animal print, subliminally reinforcing her character as a predator. 

Some of my underlying elements:

  As the 3d lighting model above shows, the structure of the painting is an explosion - Le Pescadou is exploding figuratively - Armageddon - the end of an era. 

Also, while a painterly realistic oil, "Le Pescadou" is painted as a dream, an epic, a place full of life, full of fun, full of fun people, the place to be, to remember.

The stage directions for Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie" is that it is a "memory" play, as if shot through gauze" - the protagonist is remembering his family as he wanders the earth as a sailor, having left them long ago. I painted "Le Pescadou" in that manner. Like "Finian's Rainbow" or "Camelot" - this "Le Pescadou" is a dream, again "shot through gauze".