Sultan Ibrahim I plays with American fantasies that Barks began exploring in the late 1920s for The Eye-Opener: Exotic Arabia and the rich man’s harem. From 1928 to 1935 and beyond, Barks wrote and drew dozens of cartoons depicting shahs, sultans, and kings enjoying their wealth and … family. This painting was very loosely inspired by a Barks cartoon from 1933 where the Sultan is seen calling out names… looking for someone specific in the harem? Forgetting their names? Taking inventory? “Yeah, I don’t really get this joke, but then a lot of Barks’s humor from those days is lost on me. Some of the paintings I do based on Barks’s cartoons are pretty literal translations, but this one is merely suggestive. I love the exotic setting, the anthropomorphic duck harem, and the opportunity for a rich palette. The name gag doesn’t really translate to a wordless medium like oils, so I opted to show the Sultan enjoying his money, preferring it to the lovely ladies who surround him.”

For this series of paintings, Garvin also started designing and creating narrative frames. “I’ve been a 3D artist since the 1990s and have always been fascinated by the huge, decorative frames that come from the Old European tradition, like the Black Forest ornately carved frames and clocks. And I really like what Mark Ryden is doing with frames, extending the ‘art’ beyond the painting and into the frame. I wanted to take that a step further.”