Sometimes I can tell you exactly what inspired a particular painting, no matter how ludicrous or silly. But other times, like this time, I got nothin’. From out of nowhere, ‘lava monster news anchor’ just forced itself into my head and wouldn’t go away. It was a simple, high-concept notion that I was inevitably going to paint.
My intention was always to present the canvas as if it were a television screen, with the lava monster at an anchor desk, a news crawl along the bottom, and a floating graphic representing the story being reported. The graphic and the news crawl would be my opportunity to play with my audience, offering them a few curious details about the larger world.
The balloon story? Your guess is as good as mine, and that’s just how I like it.
Connections:
I had so much fun painting the lava monster that I brought it back! The companion piece, Lava Monster in the Morning, shows a softer side of the lava monster as the host of a morning show on the same channel. And the news crawl running across the anchor desk mentions some kind of incident involving a toucan with a bowtie, which is a pretty obvious nod to Tendril is the Night.
