2022 was wild for me. We came out of the pandemic just in time for me to find myself with a surgically repaired knee, turning 50 and single for the first time since 1985.

I had 6 colonoscopies, 2 stays in the hospital that left me seriously anemic, a vasectomy, a break up, coVid, and almost bought a house in Illinois with a new lady but it didn’t work out.

I also had an art show and created 13 new pieces for it. Among them were three pieces that were a culmination of an idea I had for a while but didn’t know what to do with.

I Love to Fish painting of a woman in a cactus fishing with a heart shaped lure sitting in a prickly pear cactus growing out of a Fred's Fish Fry Cup
I Love To Fish
Nacho Hollarback Girl painting of a girl in a prickly pear cactus growing out of a rico cheese can with skulls wearing top hats
Nacho Hollaback Girl
Best Maid Plans of Mice and Men painting of a lady in a prickly pear cactus growing out of a pickle jar
The Best Maid Plans of Mice and Men
I Can’t Remember the Alamo

For a few years I knew I wanted to do something with pinup girls posing in, around, and on prickly pear cactuses, but I needed something else, another layer, a special WOODCOCK Lowbrow Pop Art twist. That started to come into view as I considered what the cacti might be growing out of. Containers, cans, cups, buildings and brands that are uniquely San Antonio, to go with the women I was deciding to use for my pinups…also uniquely San Antonio. Especially since I had been going through the San Antonio dating ringer for the previous 6 months.

  1. San Antonio women love to fish
  2. San Antonio women are spicy
  3. San Antonio women have their own agendas
  4. San Antonio women can drink

Now, it is important to note that none of these “revelations” are criticisms…except maybe the fishing part. I don’t get that… and although they may be broad generalizations, they reflect my experience with the limited number I encountered across various races and ethnicities…again except the fishing part. I swear they all say they love to fish.

But the result gets my delicate beauties nestled in the hostile embrace of prickly pear pads…a plant that represents so much of the environment and culture. Food, medicine, feed for livestock, beauty all within a rugged plant that can damn near survive anything as long as it’s hot enough. I love all that prickly pear represents about the people, the history and the very climate itself.

Keep digging, WOODCOCK 🪏

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After a long exile in South Texas climbing out of a nihilistic funk, Otis Woodcock has found his way back to the open skies and quiet horizons of the American prairie. Having earned an MFA from Miami University, Ohio, he left his ancestral home in southern Indiana, spending the last three decades between Louisville, Kentucky, and San Antonio, Texas, developing his Iconoclasmatic Pop Art™ practice. On this journey, an anxious recovering Catholic and cancer survivor gradually evolved into the optimistic existentialist whose work is less interested in providing answers than in questioning certainty. Today, Woodcock lives and works where the seasonal rhythms and expansive landscapes of the Midwest serve as the backdrop for an ongoing exploration of belief systems, cultural inheritance, and the subtle poetry of ordinary things.

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