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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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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026 This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly. An Auckland Sighting On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change. If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Stree...
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