Females
From the Venus de Milo to the Mona Lisa to Nude Descending a Staircase, artists have enjoyed painting women. Many of Roy Lichtenstein’s early paintings focused on female heads. Like Lichtenstein, I like the way comic artists depict females in their strips and books, using a line here to define an eyebrow, a line there to scultp a jaw. The sources of two of the paintings below are Mary Worth Sunday pages from the 1960s by Ken Ernst, who really knew how to draw the gals. (I own the original art for both source pages.)
Some people have asked about “Gatewood Cobb,” referred to in the first painting below. Cobb was just another comic character in Mary Worth, but he could have been Rhett Butler as played by Clark Gable. The seemingly negative comment in the second painting about this not being a “cultural capital” was actually said by Mary in the original strip (which I own), but I transposed the word balloon so it could be said by another (and prettier) character.
The woman looking in the mirror, farther right, came from a Lois Lane comic book, but the head is actually April Kane, from Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, a double “swipe.” Several women who saw this canvas when I was painting it one summer at a studio in Long Beach’s Old School were offended. They though the comment attributed to the woman “sexist.” Others thought it funny. Art need not satisfy everybody.
GATEWOOD COBB: Acrylic on canvas: 3 feet by 3 feet; wraparound canvas with art (including artist's signature) continuing around the edge. $400.
CULTURAL CAPITAL: Acrylic on canvas: 4 feet by 3 feet; wraparound canvas with art (including artist's signature) continuing around the edge. $500.
GIRL IN THE MIRROR: Acrylic on canvas: 3 feet by 4 feet; wraparound canvas with art (including artist's signature) continuing around the edge. $600.