King's Symbolism Stripped To Reveal His Humanity

In going through my albums to get organized this past week, I found this record of Martin Luther King Jr. speech excerpts. After digging up this beautiful photo, I decided to paint it. I can pay hommage and celebrate anybody who has a recording on vinyl, after all. "I Have a Dream" is on side 2, so it's still somewhat playable. However, a reason I paint some of these portraits the way I do is to show the person as a human being, trying to capture their soul and the spirit of their Life. As this article discusses, too often iconic figures in history become reduced to a single moment, like with King's famous speech. I hope my paintings generally counterract the flattening of culturally important people, both visually and substantively.

I'd like to know what you think! How do you think my paintings characterize their subject? There are a good number of examples here on my blog, and you can also:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: http://www.vinylart.info/

and look through the online gallery. Do my paintings celebrate their lives and contributions to our culture?

Some Like It Hot

I was amazed that I found an album of her recordings for her movies that was in bad enough shape to paint. I hope I did her justice. I wouldn't want to offend Joltin' Joe's memory of his Marilyn. What the American public has considered "beautiful" has sure changed over the years. I've considered many very different actresses to be gorgeous. I used to draw and sculpt the figure from live models, so I became aware of the subjectivity and individuality of beauty. Here is a group of publicly known women that helped shape my sense of feminine exquisiteness:

Audrey Hepburn
Lauren Bacall
Rita Hayworth
Marilyn Monroe
Barbara Feldon
Shannon and Tracy Tweed
Gillian Anderson
Michelle Pfeiffer
Anna Nicole Smith (as the Guess girl)

So American... oh well, that's where I grew up! And near Hollywood. I suppose, then, these really capture what I consider the beautiful celebrity, not feminine beauty in general. How shallow is that? This is, however, a part of who I am and of my pop culture, so it's definitely relevant to this blog.

Also relevant to this blog about my trials and tribulations as an artist, the glass of 2 of the 3 I sent to Wild About Music broke in transit. Blast! This is the third time. I am switching over to plexiglass for everybody now, for sure. It's just not worth the worry every time I send one with glass. Plex is lighter anyway. The practical issues of being an artist are trying. I just want to be able to paint and make people happy, not be bothered by packaging concerns. If you'd like to see the ones I sent to Austin even though they aren't displayed for sale yet, you can:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

and look through the online gallery.