Oil on canvas
56″ x 44″
1985

“In Paul Back from San Francisco, created when I was 20, my mom painted the idealized version of who I wanted to become. She includes the case for my bass guitar, an instrument I was struggling to learn how to play. I did spend the next four years in a rock band though, becoming exactly the person she painted, and it did define my identity through my early 20’s. In the painting, I am wearing a concert t-shirt from Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, on their Voice of America Tour, which I loved. It also featured an image from Picasso’s Guernica, which caught my mom’s eye. Her version of the Picasso window appears in the upper left of the painting, filled with my own interpretive sketch of the San Francisco cityscape.” –Paul Barchilon