Sorry for the cringy title. I put it down as a placeholder figuring I’d come up with something better by the time I got done writing this. You know what else was hard? Coming up with a project for Kjartan Slettemark! He was edgy and political. As much as I admire his work, political is not something I do here. I want my community to be a safe place to chat, to be silly, to talk about a good/bad/boring/exciting day without any judgement.
On top of that, Kjartan loved his plastic and how do you digitize that? Looking back at Nixon Visions, I could have taken his image and processed it in a bunch of different ways, but in the end it was something else that spoke to me. The Poodle costume.
I love everything about this thing. The best part is that it all came about because of a typo. Six months of work to prove a point against system that dogged the man for years over his mental health all because they couldn’t spell. So good!
Then I came across this image:
That’s when I knew I needed to paint a sexy KjARTan poodle and that’s exactly what happened. One layer, black and white, done in one sitting.
It was so much fun to paint! A little dark, a little weird – it’s the kind of art I love to make. So there you have it, my little homage to Kjartan Slettemark!