When I was a toddler my family gifted me clowns as comforting companions. At Twelve my grandmother gave me a novelty figurine of Emmet Kelly as Weary Willie the famous Hobby Clown from the Great Depression. The figurine was also music box that played a melancholic version of send in the clowns. At twelve I was not impressed, but a middle-aged man with a nostalgic connection for the masculine performances of clowns, this figurine and Weary Willie are my most prized procession.

​

In a conversation with my brother Mike, I told him I was going to do a portrait of Bill Murray, an iconic figure of our collective childhoods. He said coincidentally that Bill had a face that that reminded him of that old "Hobo Clown." Mike knew of my prized musical figurine, but did not know how important the character of Weary Willie had become in my personal aesthetic catalog.

So Bill Murray and Emmet Kelly have become Weary Billie. A character lost and wanting through time and alone but not forgotten.