“Turn of a Friendly Card” (2023)

“Turn of a Friendly Card” (2023)
By Abbey Ryan (1979-)
20×24, oil on canvas

In 2017, when I turned 60, I commissioned a pair of “legacy” paintings from Abbey Ryan, whose work I have collected for many years. The concepts were to pay homage to my career as a chemistry professor (this painting) and also to my Italian heritage on my father’s side of the family (the companion painting). Abbey is an excellent painter whose style evokes the Dutch Masters, and whose work could easily be mistaken for paintings from straight out of that era. These are the largest and most complex compositions she has attempted to date (and knocked them straight out of the park). Nearly all of the objects came from me, and she gets 100% credit for everything else.

This painting is titled “Turn of a Friendly Card.” The title is a direct pull from the themed 1980 record album by The Alan Parsons Project, which features songs that revolve around gambling and the Vegas culture. The titular song contains the lyric “And the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card.” That line has always impressed me as a broader comment on science, and all of life, as a game of chance whose outcome relies so often on a random good turn that happens in the right place at the right time.