While the inspiration well has been somewhat dry lately in the art department, I usually manage to surprise myself every now and then by producing a half-competent piece of art. Arguably my best work is “Mona Lisa Overdrive: Redux”, which is actually a modification of a previous work.
While I don’t pretend to be a serious artist, this piece was slightly different to the others in the sense that it had a concrete meaning behind it. I had wanted to cut up a Renaissance painting into my own vision for quite some time, but had never been able to find a piece that gave me inspiration. For a while I struggled, until I came across perhaps the most famous portrait in the world: the Mona Lisa.
I wanted to give it a modern twist, but also something of a dystopian feel. I therefore picked out a tasty little Soviet gasmask and a generic pistol and got to work. It took me around two hours to complete. The painting (to me at least) shows the contrast between the Renaissance, I.E. the golden age of humanity, and the dystopian, 1984-esque world that we find ourselves in today. I am genuinely proud of this piece, and have not produced anything remotely near it’s quality since.
Another piece that I kind of like is called “Shotgun Messiah”:
This was incredibly simple to do, and the message is obvious. I wanted to play on the militarism of the fundamentalist right by putting a halo of Fat Men (the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima) over the President of the United States. While not complicated, I think the message is clear enough.
Like the above works of art? Lemme know! You can check out the rest of my work at http://rhy-himself.deviantart.com
