1999: Evil Masters
Old paintings:
1999 Evil Masters
New painting:
In 1999, I chose to do evil versions of famous paintings. Some of these are my favorite artists, some are just well-known. I recently was sorting through a lot of paintings and found an old drawing of Whistler’s Mother as a skeleton that I had forgotten that I never got to paint.
Some of these are my favorite paintings ever. The Michelangelo is probably my third or fourth favorite painting. God is wearing a labcoat. A labcoat. It says more than I ever could say with words. It’s funny, but there’s a genuine commentary there. I rarely nail it like that, and more often than not it’s more about style than substance, so I appreciate it when I get lucky and have some substance. It was a bit of a happy accident, it seemed logical to have Frankenstein, since the original is about the first spark of life, but it turned into something more. I guess what I’m struggling to say is that I don’t often get to put wit into my paintings and this is a time when I did. I’m also happy that I figured out how to make it look like marble. I actually overpainted the background then wiped it off with paper towels and it accidentally looked perfect. Not sure if I could do it that well again. I used the same technique on the Superman and later the Frankenstein this year.
The Picasso cracks me up every time I look at it. I think that one was a milestone in the development of my humor in my painting. I’ve tried to put more of my personality into my paintings and that went a long way. Treating absurd situations as seriously as possible just kills me.
It was a lot of fun learning about the work from these artists that I admire. Doing the Nagel was a lot of fun, I used the reverse-painting on acetate trick I had learned from reading about Mike Allred’s work.
I was a little stuck when I got to “Christina’s World” I wasn’t sure what to do to make it spooky, and it was time to paint. Somehow I got the idea of the earth slowly cracking open, and light shooting upwards. I had wanted to paint light in front of objects like in the Sleepy Hollow opening credits for a long time, so here was my chance. I did OK. I should probably try it again.
The Klimt was a lot of fun, especially sneaking in the skulls into the fabric.
I remember painting these things all over the place, at our apartment, at my parents house, at Trish’s parent’s house, everywhere we were in Sept. ’99. I had a new job in Philly and we were still living in Doylestown, so the long commute meant finding time to paint whenever I could.
I was running out of steam when I got to the flytrap. It was my last idea and it came to me quickly. The work is a little sloppy, but I still didn’t want to redo it when it came time this year to choose one to repaint.
I looked over the paintings to pick one to redo, but I really didn’t think I could do better than these. Stumped, I then changed the rules for this year and decided to do a Warhol.
I originally started on a version with Marilyn four times, with more and more zombie-like rotting in each picture, but when I showed the sketches to Trish, she was kind of bummed that I was ruining images of Marilyn and I had to admit it seemed wrong. I decided to do something different and remembered that I had wanted to do a painting of the Bride of Frankenstein this year and was disappointed I didn’t have an opportunity. Thoughts collided and there I was with the idea.
I actually had to make one of these in Photoshop to get the colors down. I had tried to just imagine how they would translate from the original to spooky, orange / purple / green. It was surprisingly difficult.
Alright, thus endeth the ramble.
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