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I went to an art show last night for some local artists, including Shawn Crahan. Maybe you don’t know the name, but you’ve probably heard of his band: Slipknot. Some people are just so overflowing with creativity that it can’t be contained to one medium – they sing, they act, they sculpt, they paint. I don’t have that problem (I wish I did), but here are 10 people who do.
1. Paul McCartney. The Cute Beatle took up painting at the age of 40, but don’t expect any deep, psychological explanations behind any of them: “I basically like to apply paint onto canvas. I just like the act of it — I make it up as I go along. I really don’t analyze them that much.” The one pictured is called Big Heart and was dedicated to his then-fiancee, Heather Mills. Whoops.
2. Marilyn Manson. He sings, he writes, he makes absinthe, and, oh yeah, he paints. He once told a magazine that he started painting in 1999 by creating quick watercolors to sell to drug dealers. He has since had several exhibitions, but at least one critic thinks Manson is overrated, saying that his watercolors look as if they’re done by a “psychiatric patient given materials to use as therapy.” In a bad way. But that’s kind of Manson’s whole thing, isn’t it?
3. Viggo Mortsensen is another one who is multi-talented. Not only is he an actor, he has 14 albums to his name, owns a publishing company, has written 16 books, speaks several languages, paints and is a photographer. Whew.
4. Josh Hartnett took up oil painting in high school after he was injured playing football. In fact, after 40 Days and 40 Nights got big, he took some time off to travel and paint. “It relaxes me because it’s just me and the canvas and there’s no right way or wrong way,” he said. But he must keep his work to himself, because I couldn’t find any examples of it.
5. David Bowie has been painting since the ‘70s. This piece was completed in 1976 and is called Portrait of J.O.
6. Bob Dylan created an entire series while he was on tour between 1989 and 1992 and named it “Drawn Blank.” These were made into a book in 1994 and the series and its continuation is now for sale at a gallery in Germany. You can still buy this one to the left – it’s called Rooftop Bar and is yours for the low price of £1,250.
7. Dennis Hopper was actually an artist long before he was an actor. A collection of his look at the ‘60s through photos was exhibited in 2000 and included portraits of figures from J.F.K. to Bill Cosby. That’s Jane Fonda with a bow and arrow in the picture.
8. Tony Bennett is better known as Anthony Benedetto. His paintings are huge among the Hollywood set – owners of Benedetto originals include Oprah, Carol Burnett, Donald Trump, Mickey Rooney, Katie Couric and the late Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant. Don’t let the self-portrait fool you: he’s probably best known for his landscapes and nature scenes. But I couldn’t pass up a self-portrait of Tony Bennett in a track suit, c’mon. You can see a more complete representation of his work here.
9. Sylvester Stallone. I know. I thought the same thing. But yes, Sly paints. I guess technically he’s a multi-media artist, because his piece Rocky I included bits of script from the first Rocky film. I’m sure Rocky I hangs in a place of honor in a collector’s home somewhere…
10. Marilyn Monroe. She may not have produced a large collection, but she did dabble. In fact, she created a painting of a red rose for none other than J.F.K., signing it “President Kennedy, Happy Birthday and again I say Happy Birthday. Always, Marilyn Monroe, June 1, 1962.” She died before she had the chance to give it to him and it was sold in an auction of her personal items a few years ago.
There are plenty of other celebrity artists – are there any you think are particularly good? Or any who are laughably bad? Share in the comments, and have a good weekend!
Comments (27)
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I know he wasn’t many folks idea of a real artist, but Red Skelton had a huge second career as a painter too… painting clowns. My husband had one of Red’s paintings left to him by his grandfather, who didn’t believe that the signature on the painting was real. When gramps and grandma went to see him perform in Las Vegas, he brought the painting with them.. and Mr. Skelton told him that yes.. he did paint it and that was his signature, and signed it again. It’s not exactly MY cup of tea either (I think the whole clown portrait thing is kind of creepy). But we’ve got it (but it’s NOT hung on our walls.. like I said .. a bit too creepy for my taste).
posted by Mindy on 9-25-2009 at 4:42 pm
Gerry Carcia.
posted by Troy Lee Wells on 9-25-2009 at 5:35 pm
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN!
posted by Corrine on 9-25-2009 at 5:53 pm
David Lynch is an amazing artist. His pieces are weird, haunting, and sometimes a little creepy… just like his movies.
posted by Mandy Christoph on 9-25-2009 at 5:58 pm
David Byrne and Steven Wright.
posted by Zach on 9-25-2009 at 6:01 pm
Mike Shinoda of the band Linkin Park is actually a very good artist.
Google “Glorious Excess (Dies)” fantastic stuff.
posted by Derek on 9-25-2009 at 6:52 pm
Grace Slick
posted by Ellie on 9-25-2009 at 7:05 pm
@ Corrine,
I’d love to see any of those.
posted by Anon Emous on 9-25-2009 at 9:14 pm
Keifer Sutherland also does artwork. In fact, he did the CD artwork for a compelation album put out by a now defunct radio station here in Atlanta.
posted by Jamie M. on 9-25-2009 at 9:46 pm
Gerard Way!
posted by Asti on 9-26-2009 at 12:21 am
Kurt Vonnegut did some amazing lithographs *
posted by Ron on 9-26-2009 at 3:43 am
Paul Stanley
posted by Mike on 9-26-2009 at 9:05 am
That Marilyn Manson painting is something. I never thought there would be something that could make me laugh and gag at the same time. lol/gag
posted by Tdave on 9-26-2009 at 9:46 am
Jane Seymour does beautiful work.
posted by Arcadia on 9-26-2009 at 10:55 pm
Joni Mitchell.
See:
http://jonimitchell.com/paintings/
posted by Aimee on 9-26-2009 at 11:06 pm
Bowie’s ‘Portrait of J.O.’ is a portrait of Iggy Pop, born James Osterberg, Jr.
posted by Dale on 9-27-2009 at 12:22 pm
Anthony Quinn
posted by Wrongo on 9-27-2009 at 12:55 pm
Peter Falk makes cool drawings. He can be seen drawing some people in Wings of Desire.
As for the Bob Dylan art, he did charcoal drawings between 89 and 92, which were published in a book called “Drawn Blank.” A few years ago, an owner of an art museum in Chemnitz (the Kunstsammlung maybe? something like that) was interested in them. Someone made large prints of the charcoal drawings on special paper and then in 2006 or 2007 Dylan painted over these with watercolors/pastels. The first exhibit of them was in Chemnitz in January 2008 (I got to go!) and then they moved on to London, and maybe some other places. Because they were prints, he was able to paint the same picture a few times in different ways. It was interesting to see the differences. I believe you can buy a book of all the paintings.
posted by Jenny on 9-27-2009 at 2:35 pm
Martin Mull is a wonderful painter
posted by chris r on 9-27-2009 at 9:32 pm
I’ve seen some really haunting work from John Mellencamp. In fact, my first celebrity sighting was John (at the time) Cougar Mellencamp at the mall in Bloomington, Indiana around 1985. I was about eight, and I was hanging out in the art supply store. I saw him outside the store, checking out the booth of paintings by local artists. I remember being struck by how short the guy was.
Also: Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, is quite an important abstract impressionist. His first love was art; music came later. In fact, a lot of his music strikes me as an attempt to play/sing his paintings, if that makes any sense.
posted by clint on 9-28-2009 at 10:38 am
That was the first painting by Viggo Mortsensen I’ve seen, but I read the introduction he wrote the the 2007 (I think) edition of America’s Best Nonrequired Reading (can’t remember if that’s the exact title) and it was one of the best things about the book.
posted by Wendy on 9-28-2009 at 10:59 am
Phyllis Diller does a lot of artwork.
Gary Burghoff (Radar from Mash) does some amazing water colors.
posted by emily on 9-28-2009 at 11:42 am
John Entwistle of the Who drew the cover for The Who By Numbers. I don’t know if he has done any other art.
posted by Jon. on 9-28-2009 at 2:27 pm
Federico Castelluccio, who played Furio on ‘The Sopranos’ – is a renowned artist.
posted by Mama9cats on 9-28-2009 at 4:13 pm
If you’re a fan of the space program or the series “From the Earth to the Moon,” you may remember the astronauts of Apollo 12, the second flight to land on the moon. Astronaut Al Bean does some FABULOUS artwork and has a website.
recaptcha: partys paeans
struck me as funny :D
posted by Bethy on 9-29-2009 at 3:58 pm
Alan Bean is a very good artist (in fact, since retiring from NASA and the military, he has made a career out of it), but he’s not the only space-going artist. Alexei Leonov, the first man to ever spacewalk (aboard Voskhod 1, also the first flight of a two-man spacecraft), is known for his artwork. Like Bean, he continues to paint in his retirement, and has established a reputation as an artist entirely independent of his fame as a cosmonaut. Some of his pieces were actually done *in* space, including a whole series that he did on his second spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975.
Going back to Alan Bean, his work has an extra interesting factor in that not only does he paint almost exclusively pictures of the lunar surface, he tries to incorporate the *actual* lunar surface into them, using the mementos he kept of his trip: scraps of cloth from his gear, impressions of his moon boots and rock hammer, and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, [i]actual moondust[/i], mixed into the paint. So if you buy an original Bean, you’re getting a little bit of the Moon as well.
posted by Calli Arcale on 9-30-2009 at 9:40 am
One more thing: Alexei Leonov is often billed as “the first artist in space”, as he was already an accomplished artist when he flew on Voskhod 2 (which I erroneously called Voskhod 1 above; Voskhod 1 was the first multi-crew spacecraft, with a crew of three; Voskhod 2 carried just two crew so that it could also carry an inflatable airlock). His first flight was in March of 1965.
posted by Calli Arcale on 9-30-2009 at 9:45 am