Dog House
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 64” x 84”
Scrap Medal
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 22” x 118”
Death Medal
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 18” x 82”
Medal of Free Dumb
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 18” x 104”
Woodstock
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 64” x 84”
Super Fly
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 55” x 118”
Schroeder and Franklin
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 64” x 84”
Security Blanket
2009 | Acrylic enamel varnish and plastic cups on wood | 64” x 84”
WTHWT
2008 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 54" x 250"
Boom Shaka Laka Laka
2008 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 97” x 156”
Praise The Lowered
2006 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 70” x 122”
Intermittent Emotional Disorder
2006 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 70” x 122”
See Sick
2005 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 102” x 134”
Big Fatty
2005 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 30” x 30”
Chillin' With My Homie
2004 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 90” x 134”
You’re So Sane, I Bet You Think This Art Is About You (Santa Monica Bay)
2003 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 42" x 240"
Calmly Insane In My Nest
2002 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 60” x 128”
Its My Nest And I'll Scream If I Want To
2002 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 60” x 108”
See Sick
1999 | Acrylic and varnish on canvas | 56” x 104”
ARTIST STATEMENT
Pop’d From the Panel
BY TOM EVERHART
In one of Sparky’s last essays included in his 1999, “A Golden Celebration”, he speaks to the growth of his work:
“It took on a quality which I think is even more important, and that is one which I can describe only as abstraction.”
In Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s 1989, "Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz”, Sparky is quoted to say, “Perspective and detail become unimportant if one knows a table is a table.”
His ability to convert an everyday object into an abstract form without loosing the features that distinguish it as an object separated him from his fellow cartoonist. It actually joined him more with the thinking of the abstract fine artist of his time. Sparky’s abstracting method, like that of these artists, would first identify the object. Then, isolate and identify its singular features. And finally, put them back together according to his own artistic needs.
He used these basic principles of abstracting when he brought us down to the child’s eye level by transforming the conventionally proportioned 7-1/2 head tall person into a 2-1/2 head tall figure. He gave us the opportunity to be close and immediate to his characters by abstracting his conventional perspective backgrounds, in 1960, into flat unconventional environments that stopped us from fading away into the distance of the former surroundings. Thus, and most importantly giving us the feeling of closeness to his subject matter.
In acknowledgement of this, importance, the two works, “Security Blanket”’ and “Woodstock”, were created to be my own abstractions of his abstracted objects. Like Sparky, I have isolated and identified the singular features, such as the colors and textures of Woodstock and his nest, and the folds and stuffing of the blanket, and have put them back together according to my own artistic needs.
Sparky was constantly telling me to see the work in a new way. In Johnson’s, “Good Grief”, Sparky is quoted saying, “A good cartoonist looks at the same thing as everybody else and then produces a drawing of something nobody else saw.”