My work is quite opposite of Martin's and always so full of bits and pieces of this and that - much like my thoughts. Always cluttered and in somewhat of a frenzy. I think that is why I so appreciate Martin's minimalist ways. Martin told me that he nearly painted an all white canvas as his rip on my work.
I picked several of Martin's "Scottish Hills" pieces for this project. I initially wanted to stick with one choice and was planning on using nothing but Martin's painted houses collaged on the landscape, keeping it entirely Scottish, just a more cluttered version. I would have thrown in a few sheep grazing and maybe some Highland cows, as those have come up in discussions on the forum. But then it hit me one night. My mind took off and I ended up Americanizing the Scottish landscape, dotting it with Americanisms from left to right, top to bottom. It can be seen as a total spoof on Martin's work. Where in the Scottish hills do you see the Golden Arches?
I started out painting the background in a somewhat Martin-like tradition with waterbased paints, outlined in black. I drew in the city from Martin's "American Cityscape" and I added the McDonalds' Arches as a joke. Then I went to town. And this town comes complete with a shop called Martin.com - it's right next door to the One Hour Martinizing dry cleaners. I used Martin's photo from his Interview on EBSQ and digitally altered the color, attached it to another artist's body, added an image of one of my paintings on the t-shirt and threw in a pair of "Wellies" for fun. The Wellies - well I won a lovely set of Martin's cards just for knowing what Wellies are and if you don't know, they're rubber boots. I added a tall Chevrolet sign and altered the name to read DEVINE. I also altered the car's side mirror by using Martin's original work as the reflection and including the words you always see in those side mirrors - OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
I've used Arches watercolor paper, gouache, acrylics, & photo images - for any digital manipulation I used Photoshop.
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