Oil Painting #3: Our Family Portrait 2023
For my third oil painting, We went big! 36x48 The prompt for this painting was abstract. Normally I'm up for a good abstract, that's within my jam purview. I researched the artists on my list and found Tim Biskup. I really liked his "monsters", as I call them. I thought about a painting of our family I did many years ago in which we were painted in a folksy style. My mind immediately jumped to family portrait time! Therefore, I created a creature for each of our family members, including the 4 legged ones. I like how Biscup has his figures floating in space. I decided to use this technique but not have mine overlap to emphasize that we are all just floating in space, only connected by the attachment to the edges of the canvas. We are just hanging out and having fun! Each "monster" in my family includes a reference to the corresponding family member. For example, when Noah was growing up, he used KillerBee for his screen name and such. His favorite color was yellow. The avatar that he used was a man surrounded by bees. Therefore, I used these elements to help create his character. Another example is Randall. He is in Cyber-Security for a bank. He is always building stuff out of electronics. So I made him a robot figure and painted the image of an old computer virus pop-up that used to happen in the '90s. To add a personal touch and bring the images together, I added peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which are a staple in our house as well as a family favorite. Even the dog gets in on the action. When we have an empty peanut butter jar, we give it to the dog to lick clean before recycling the plastic jar. I chose a black background to help the figures pop off of the page and show a little depth I added a layer of Payne's gray over the black. It also reinforces the Neosurrealistic qualities of this painting.
