23 March 2012

Zombies

Things I'm into right now:
  • Zombies
Missing Mandible Melvin
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
20 x 16 inches

  • The Walking Dead (Zombies AAANNNNDDDD COWBOYS?!!)




  • Paying so much attention to these things that I have dreams (not nightmares) about the Zombie Apocalypse (widely know  as The Z.A.)


I just received my first issue of the magazine New American Paintings (which, let's be honest, at almost 200 pages and a high quality binding... it's a book.)  They consider it an experiment in art publishing and it is in my opinion the most important publication on modern painting in the States (and it is all put together right here in Boston!).


Anyway, I was psyched to get into this edition and see paintings from Summer Wheat bringing some of my favorite things together, Zombies and Painting.  If she could work a cowboy in there somewhere I'd really appreciate it, but I'm satisfied for the moment.
Wheat has pushed Zombies into the lead for me in the ongoing Zombies vs. Vampires debate.  I'll recheck the issue when I see some amazing Vampire paintings; maybe something raunchy relating to Sookie and Bill could win me over...

Moldy Brain Eater
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
20 x 16 inches

Preacher
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
72 x 96 inches
Not entierly convinced that Preacher is Zombie related, but these are the three paintings presented in New American Paintings so let's just go with it.

Summer Wheat is 35 and originally from Oklahoma City, currently living in Brooklyn. You can check out her website here.
This is what she has to say about her work:

"I don't describe my work as "abstract" painting.  I see it as failed representational sculpture, and I love its failure.  How can I make paint three-dimensional?  How can I depict a subject matter that is more than its form?  These are the impossible questions that push me to abuse the purity of paint and uplift the awkward moments in human life.  My paintings are full of messy human content: dorkiness, disappointment, humor and loss.  They are impersonations in which the emotional content overwhelms the physical.  Fascinated by vulnerability, I exalt in the incomplete."