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“I was obsessed with Bridget Bardot. I remember doing a couple of pretty sexy drawings of her back then, and maybe one of Kim Novak. I loved drawing portraits,” Bob said.

He adopted an old animation technique for his drawing that he gleaned from watching Walt Disney cartoonists flipping back and forth from one image to the next.

In the 60’s his drawings were of literary figures such as Henry David Thoureau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allen Poe. By the 70’s his worked had evolved to portraits of the spiritual masters including the A-list gurus of the time; Paramahansa Yogananda, Sathya Sai Baba, Baba Ram Dass, Swami Satchidanada, Swami Muktananda, Baba Hari Dass.

It was in the early 90’s that Bob’s artistry veered in the direction of female mannequins.

“Here was an idealized representation of female beauty that I as a man could stare at without getting anyone pissed off,” commented Bob about mannequins.

“While a woman might be looking at the same mannequin, she might be thinking, ‘What a gorgeous dress!’ I, on the other hand, would probably be thinking, “What a gorgeous breast! What a great mouth!”

“That in combination with the whole reflection thing of seeing the mannequin through a glass store window, but also seeing the street, people and cars reflected in it, while at the same time seeing deep into the store, as well as seeing the glass surface itself with its lettering and glare; all this became the subject of my artwork.”

Bob's paintings of mannequins focuses on the individual female figure. He is very particular about the way the display window image is cropped, suiting his aesthetic vision.

I asked Bob about a primitive painting sitting to the side of his studio, certainly not in his current slick style. He smiled and said it was his first painting from when he was five. It was a copy of a Van Gogh painting called, “Man with a Blue Hat.”

Taking it to class, he received encouragement from his teacher who assigned him a project to do another painting. It was nice to hear a story of a teacher giving encouragement to her young pupil, especially as his older brother Jerry was considered the artist in the family. His brother went on to formal art training. Bob is basically self-taught as an artist and songwriter.

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