TSA
Joined: Aug 31, 2006
Posts: 3978
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TSA
"Tiki Cat"
30" x 24"
Acrylic on canvas
~This image was inspired by my cat, and the urge to create something extremely Kitsch, very Hawaiian, and Tiki, and to see if I could get it out into the mainstream-tourist-gift-world, with out "them" knowing it was really "Low-Brow Art". It worked. It's now reproduced all over Hawaii. You can find it as birthday cards, refrigerator magnets, stickers, in calendars, post card sets, etc... It's an image that seemed to dig into the pop-culture here and take hold. I have a strange feeling that, like the vintage Hawaiiana images from the 30's, it will be reproduced on hawaiian post cards long after I am gone. Which was the point. This painting actually scared me when I was about 3/4 of the way through. I thought "Am I insane? What the heck am I doing?" This is a silly cat playing a ukulele, in a Hawaiian Aloha Shirt, on the beach in Waikiki... but painted with every drop of careful rendering love I could muster. It took a very long time, as I very carefully painted with tiny brushes every hair and grain of sand...months of work; on a cartoon cat. When I doubted my own sanity, that's when I knew I had been successful in creating a piece of real "Low-Brow Art". I knew It was going to work. Each piece since then, I try to push myself and the image until I feel doubt and fear about what I am doing. The humorous painting "The Widow" (a cat wearing a lace collar) by Frederick Dielman, early 1860's-70's is always shown as an example of "Kitsch Art". A cat then had to be my subject - plus my love of a previous pet, and when you look deep into the eyes of this painting, you will see how my cat saw herself; as the deadly, jungle-queen and ultimate huntress-of-the-night. Cat owners always get the joke.
Brad (Tiki Shark) Parker
"Brad Parker creates lurid paintings that pull in influences from tiki, comics, and rock."
[ Edited by: tiki shark art 2013-08-16 03:30 ]
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