We will survive this pandemic. “The Survivor”, a portrait of my pup, LJ, painted one week after he was attacked by a pit bull and survived. He was resting in my grandfather’s reading chair as I painted him. My grandfather, Doctor Joseph Adam Wintermantel, was a graduate of the University of Buffalo School of Medicine where Dr. Roswell Park once taught. Roswell Park Cancer Institute is where I was treated for stage four throat cancer and survived seven years ago. I was treated with radiation. You can see there are still research papers that my Grandfather had published with the Radiological Society decades ago on the treatment of cancers with radiation. He also treated a mother for throat cancer in his office with open tube radiation, shortly after he delivered her only son, who quickly became one of my best friends and has been my whole life. That connection will become even more profound to this project as you will see in a few short days. Stay tuned. 8”x6” - oil on copper. I’m building a custom frame for it now.

UPDATE: more survivor connections. I was reminded that my Grandmother was a breast cancer survivor. My grandfather actually operated on her. They both served in WWI during the flu of 1918. He was a medic and she was an Army nurse. Thanks Frances Albano Williams!