Jim Steward has been a friend since we worked at McDonald's together in the mid-70's. He is now a co-owner of an ad agency in St. Louis and as such works with the Albert Pujols Foundation. For those of you unfamiliar with baseball, Pujols is perhaps one of the greatest players in Major League history and just finished his ninth year of play, all with the St. Louis Cardinals. During that time he has never hit below .314 and he has been the National League MVP twice. He has also become well known for his charitable efforts in his home country, the Dominican Republic through his foundation.
I had lunch with Jim this spring and he asked if I might try and paint a portrait of Albert for his dinner-auction event to be held this Dec. 5th in St. Louis. I told him that I'd try, but if he didn't like it he could line his bird cage with it! I just mailed the finished canvas yesterday.
It may not actually be used in this year's auction due to its late arrival (my fault!), but Jim thought they might make some copies of it and have Albert autograph those for larger contributors to his foundation, then use it in next year's event. It will be fun to find out where it ends up, but in any case, I learned a lot and am pleased with the result.
This final photo is of a smaller version I painted for my son, Charles. I tried a couple of different things with the background and the name on the left. Having the two side by side reminded me of the seek and find games where you try and find the 10 items that are different. Well, there are probably 10,000 slight differences between the two, so don't bother looking!
