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Claudio at the Beach – A Campy Tribute to Raymond Neher

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Claudio at the Beach — a formal, portrait-style painting of a bearded man in mirrored aviator sunglasses and a straw sun hat with a red band, wearing a yellow robe patterned with fish and suns over a red, green, and white striped shirt. He holds a bottle of 'Beach Party Suntan Lotion' in one hand and a black umbrella behind him in the other, with calm blue ocean and clouds in the background. Original painting by Raymond Neher, with a beach background reimagined by John Corney.
Claudio at the Beach — original painting by Raymond Neher, beach reimagining by John Corney.

Today I'd like to share a piece with a particular story behind it. The original painting is the work of my late friend Raymond Neher, a San Francisco artist who died in 2004, and whose humour and warmth lived in every brushstroke. When Raymond died, he left me all of his unsold work — a body of paintings I've come to think of as a quiet ongoing trust, to share where I can.

The Painting, and Raymond

Raymond painted this portrait of a former partner of his — a man named Claudio. What I love about it is the gentle joke baked into its composition. The painting is treated entirely seriously: a centred, almost classical portrait, the figure framed by a dark canopy of black umbrella, the gaze level, the bearing dignified. The mirrored aviator sunglasses reflect a blue sky. The straw sun hat with its red band sits squarely on the head. And the figure holds, with quiet ceremony, a bottle labelled "Beach Party Suntan Lotion."

That's the trick of the piece. It's a portrait that takes its subject completely seriously while letting the props do all the smiling. It's camp in the best and most affectionate sense — Raymond clearly enjoyed the man he was painting, and equally clearly knew exactly what he was doing.

After Raymond's death, the original painting eventually made its way to Claudio himself — which felt right; a portrait of a man belongs, in the end, with the man it portrays. What stayed with me was the image, and the affection in it.

Reimagining the Background

The version above is my own small extension of Raymond's work. I've kept Claudio exactly as Raymond painted him — same hat, same shades, same yellow robe patterned with little fish and suns, same suntan lotion held just so — and reimagined the background, replacing the plain pale-blue field with the ocean and clouds the painting always seemed to imply. Claudio, holding suntan lotion and a beach umbrella, was clearly somewhere. I just thought I'd take him there.

I don't know whether Raymond would have made the same choice, but I like to think he'd recognise the spirit of it. Still tongue-in-cheek. Still very Claudio.

Available on Redbubble

This piece is dedicated to Raymond's memory, and to all the artists who infused their work with laughter, love, and light. Prints and products featuring Claudio at the Beach are available at my Redbubble shop.

👉 Claudio at the Beach on Redbubble

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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