Advent of the Superstalker (2024)


Superstalker started out as part of a series of images I made in the late 90's using a 3D figure modelling software called "Poser." Poser had lots of controls to make people various ages, heights and ethnicities -- and one of the dials you could twist was labelled "Superhero". I quickly found out that if you pushed this setting too far the underlying 3D geometry would become unstable and the figure would "explode" into a crazy, complicated abstract shape.


At the last second before they blew apart, the figures would teeter on the edge of a gender abyss - so masculine that they were feminine, or so feminine that they were masculine. They also looked very, very "posthuman."


I loved how crazy and problematic and unintended these results were, so I made a lot of work around them, including a short film called "Super Love People" (which was shown at the Coney Island Film Festival about 20 years ago) and a comic book story based on it (which was published in a couple of different comics anthologies). There was also a huge canvas print made of an earlier version of this image for a 2 person show I had in Manhattan in 2000 with my sadly departed old friend Roland Brener.

The Bachelor and His Bride, 2024


Based on a promotional still for “The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Mountain”, a sci-fi/comedy movie from 1959 that featured Lou Costello as an inventor trying to restore his giant girlfriend to normal size.

I’ve always been struck by pop culture stories of men (usually lonely geeks) trying to use science or magic to find and control (or even create) artificial mates — the examples are numerous, and could arguably extend to the Adam and Eve story. In this case there appeared to be some sort of computer being used by the Costello character, which reminded me of the trend among certain young men to imagine their own “waifus” - fictional girlfriends based on characters from anime or video games - which is rapidly gaining traction thanks to “chatbots.” 

One summary of the film’s plot which I found online suggested that the device was also a “time machine,” and since the off-the-shoulder dress on the “bride” seemed a bit Grecian, and Costello’s limp bowtie struck me as somewhat Victorian, I wound up mutating the image into a courtship story between an H. G. Wellsian adventurer and a mythical goddess.

The title of the piece is a nod to good ol’ Marcel Duchamp and his seminal work of freely associated found images “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.”

Gorilla, 2024


 This piece started life as an ad for "Gorilla" brand shoes which I spotted in a store window in downtown Winnipeg, sometime around 1990. The store owner's son saw me taking a photo of it from the sidewalk, came out to ask me what I was doing, and would up taking the cardboard display out of his window and giving it to me! I still have it in my basement somewhere...

The image appealed to me on two levels: first was the way the overtly phallic shoe was also, on closer inspection, vulvic too. Second was the craziness of painting an angry "animal" in a "natural" setting attacking a manufactured human artifact - all done as an advertisement. 

This is the sixth version I've done of this image over the years - a couple of earlier versions can be seen in the "Early Paintings" and "Early Photo Based" galleries linked on the righthand sidebar.

Europa in America, 2024

I have a long-standing fascination with Titian's work (back in 1992 I reworked his "Bacchus and Ariadne" for the cover of Crash Test Dummies' "God Shuffled His Feet"), mostly because it's such a great example of mixing "high" (fine art painting) and "low" (lurid content). 

This piece is based on "The Rape of Europa" from the early 1560's, which depicts the goddess Europa being abducted by Zeus/Jupiter (the bull). It was commissioned by Phillip II of Spain, who kept it in a private room where he could display it for his male guests. In other words, it was highfalutin' porn - but over the centuries it transmogrified into a respected highlight of European art history.

I started making studies for this image in the late 1990's but only got it where I wanted it to go with this version. Content-wise, the major change I made was to add a "saviour" (America/Jesus) for poor pagan Europe/Europa. In the spirit of Euro-centric allegorical practices from the early Baroque, America/Jesus is presented as a white guy in pseudo First Nations clothing.

The Artist's Brain Paints a Picture, 2024


Based on an illustration in Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, Volume 2, a children's reference book published in 1929. I was delighted by its cheerful Modernism, placing the brain of a white male artist (in a nice suit!) at the centre of the world and explaining the artistic process with a simple diagram.

Composition of the Body and Its Surroundings, 2024


This piece is based on an illustration of the atomic/molecular ingredients of a man and his environment I found in an old science textbook from the 1950's or 60's. Making this new version now, decades later, I couldn't help but imagine the atoms and molecules of the source image forming into chains of DNA, or maybe some sort of postbiolgical information - turning the body "posthuman" and "postgender".

Lucretia (After Cranach the Elder), 2024

This image is based on one of Lucas Cranach the Elder's many "Suicide of Lucretia" paintings from the 16th century. Lucretia - a tragic figure from Roman history - was a popular subject of Renaissance and Baroque painters who were always looking for excuses to incorporate nudity into their paintings. In this case, I've updated the style by a few centuries to the mid-20th, when magazine and book cover illustrators were working the same sleazy territory. 

The Fall of Man After Goltzius, 2023


This image is based on "The Fall of Man," painted in 1616 by Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. As an early Baroque painter, Goltzius employed the same sort of overtly prurient imagery that I've always enjoyed in Titian. The goats symbolize Eve's lack of chastity, while the cat symbolizes the "unjust judge" - a reminder to the viewer that this is meant to offer a moral lesson, not some cheap thrill!

For information about prints of this image, click HERE 

After Gericault, Anderson, Unknown Toymaker, 2023


This piece is based on "Lion Attacking a Horse", an oil painting by Theodore Gericault from 1820. I recreated the background with more detail, as Gericault's painting  was really just a loose sketch. In keeping with his Romanticism I tried to make the forest fantastical and overwrought.

The lion is based on photos of an old toy I found for sale on eBay, and the horse is based (quite closely) on an illustration from the summer 1950 issue of "Frontier Stories”, by an artist named Allen Anderson.

For information about prints of this image, click HERE 

Antisuper Apparition of Melissa, 2022


The first version of this piece dates back to the late 90's, but this new version warms my heart (seen here floating above my wife Melissa’s head) by being a lot closer to what I had in mind back then.

For information about prints of this image, click HERE