Still Life # 1:Devoured By Convenience

When I first began to paint, I felt I needed to improve my skills as a painter. I have had some training, attending art school for one year, but when I took up the brush again, I was not that good. So I set up a still life in the basement of the duplex I lived in at the time with my wife. Using items aquired at garage sales, I set up a display, using left over halloween skull fabric for the background. I also wanted to include lighting, so I could better render it on, well, not canvas but old screen print wall hangings. I put a devil mask on a Spiderman Halloween bucket that I had converted to a lamp by sticking a low watt bulb in. The skull was something I picked up at a sale, a fake one of course. The tv was part of my vintage television collection.
The guitar is a piece I had made earlier. At a flea market, I picked up a beautiful vintage Harmony Monterrey for fifteen dollars thinking I was getting the deal of the century. All it needed was a new set of strings. That day as I tightened the strings on the guitar to tune it, I saw why I had gotten such a bargain. The neck snapped off and I was left feeling like such an idiot for not checking it out better when I bought it.

I became angry with myself and so I created a piece by running the strings of the guitar through a skeleton model. I then glued the skeleton to the body of the guitar using copious amounts soit would resemble melted fat when dried, as well as forming a skin over the bones, which I then painted flesh tone. Some boiled spinach fettucine serves as the intestines, and you get an idea of how I felt that fateful day when I bought the damn guitar. I called the piece
"Devour By Convenience" .

Any of these paintings may be purchased if you wish, just contact me at estoledo@sbcglobal.net. I also am willing to do commissioned work as well.