This was originally painted in 1977 when I was 18 years old. It was part of a series of “pirate” paintings, a subject my teenaged brain found exciting and exotic. I gave up on the project after doing 4-5 of them, deciding the subject was retrograde and not worthy of my effort. In the 1980’s I destroyed them, or painted new subjects on top of them. This one was a hold-out, and was stored in my parents’ garage. Recently, I removed it from under the tires and garden hoses, and brought it to my studio. It was in pretty bad shape, and I was planning to toss it into the trash heap, but I decided to rescue it instead. I cleaned off the dust and grime, touched it up, fixed a few mistakes and varnished it. It has the “Rembrandt-y” feel of my early work, a style I gave up when I found my own voice, but there is still some charm in the boisterous youthful effort, so we will allow it to stick around. Our family neighbor, the late Alice Smith, got a kick out of it when it hung on our dining room wall in the late 1970’s She named it “Ghost of the Tavern.” So, that will remain its title from now on.
Lindley Farley Art 