A Night of Villains & Heroes
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an Art Journal. In fact, it’s been about six months. I was a little shocked when I realized that, but it didn’t take long for me to remember why.
The second half of 2022 was difficult. Late in the summer, my son’s partner, Ginny, lost her long battle with cancer. On the same day Ginny died, so did my darling Lucille, the big black Newfie who was always at my side and whose soul had merged with mine during the years we had together. Cancer had taken her, too. It was a sad time and I just didn’t have the inspiration or motivation to put out as much work as I normally do.
But 2022 also held some new beginnings. I helped welcome my adorable granddaughter into the world, came to the rescue of a few dogs who needed some TLC (read Getting Millie and Foolish Me), and…
I wrote a book.
Not the kind of book I’m used to writing. No, this is a coffee table book that I’ve titled, State of the Union. It’s a collection of the political oil portraits I cranked out during Trump’s reign of terror. If you know me at all, then you know I have some opinions about everything that went down while he was in office, and I’ve included some of them in this book.
During Trump’s presidency, I was running an online political and cultural magazine called Artprofiler. It was a big site, constantly hungry for content, and I began to fill it up with material about the new administration. I got it in my head that I had to paint portraits of all the larger-than-life characters surrounding Trump – Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, Mitch McConnell, Don Jr, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, and many more. I cranked out oil portraits for over three years, sometimes painting one in a day if I needed to.
Once I had a portrait painted of whichever political figure, I turned them into memes – cartoonish images wryly depicting the person’s inner weaknesses and foibles, such as Trump stuffed like a sausage into his golfing clothes, his big fat posterior directly caught by the camera. The reactions to these images from Trump followers was outrage. Every day I’d receive dozens of angry, and sometimes even threatening, messages from his people.
Sometimes it was scary. Otherwise I couldn’t help but laugh at his rabid, red-hatted, sheep-like followers.
So, I turned the whole thing into a book, and now we’re going to have a party to celebrate it!
Please join me for an art exhibit celebrating the release of State of the Union. On view will be several of the oil portraits in the book along with some of my political drawings. You’ll be one of the first people to see the book and there’ll be a limited number available for purchase. I’ll even sign your copy if you want!
Light hors d'oeuvres & beverages will be served.
I hope to see you there! Be sure to RSVP on the Facebook event page so we can get an estimated headcount for food & bev.
