{"id":15818,"date":"2014-07-17T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zatista.com\/blog\/?p=15818"},"modified":"2016-07-19T20:41:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T20:41:34","slug":"portraits-mike-myers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zatista.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/17\/portraits-mike-myers\/","title":{"rendered":"Portraits by Mike Myers"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Artnet News<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Benjamin Sutton:<\/p>\n

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Mike Myers. Photo: \u00a9 2014 Patrick McMullan Company, Inc.<\/p><\/div>\n

Canadian-born, New York-based comedian and actor Mike Myers<\/a> became an indelible part of the pop culture firmament with a string of cult and blockbuster movies in the 1990s and 2000s, including Wayne\u2019s World, Austin Powers, and Shrek. But where has he been for the last few years? In his Soho studio making art history-themed portraits of KFC spokesperson Colonel Sanders, of course! As the comedian-turned-actor-turned-artist tells GQ, he developed a painting habit a few years ago and never stopped.<\/p>\n

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One of Mike Myers\u2019s paintings of Colonel Sanders. Courtesy the artist, via the Society of Gentlemen.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI make about a painting a week,\u201d Myers says. \u201cI started painting about two and a half, three years ago. A friend of mine who\u2019s an amazing painter named Damian Loeb, I would go over just to watch him paint, and then one day he said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you paint?\u2019\u2026My first painting was of my wife, Kelly. My second one was of my dog, George Harrison. And then I got into this Colonel Sanders thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Predictably, interviewer Chris Heath has some questions about the \u201cColonel Sanders thing,\u201d which Myers explains thusly:<\/p>\n

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One of Mike Myers\u2019s paintings of Colonel Sanders.<\/p><\/div>\n

Growing up in Canada, looking south at America, they are so amazing at creating identity that they even have enough leftover to come up with the colonel who is the colonel of chicken! As a kid I literally said the words, \u201cWhy are they militarizing chicken?\u201d Because I didn\u2019t understand the Kentucky Colonel of it all. Our whole family was obsessed with the Colonel.<\/p>\n

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C is for Carl by Will Eskridge on Zatista.com<\/p><\/div>\n

For me show business was buying Kentucky Fried Chicken. Because it was nationally advertised, and it seemed exotic. First of all, it\u2019s a great character. He has his own unique silhouette\u2014you can draw him in three lines. On the day that Lucian Freud died, I painted my version of a Freud with the Colonel, naked, holding a palette, painting himself. Then I did the Colonel with the Pearl Earring. Then I did the Colonel Lisa. You know, which is the Mona Lisa with the Colonel. This is so just a hobby. It is just making stuff. That\u2019s all I want to do, is just make stuff.<\/p>\n

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I'm Going On Break by Matt Ortego on Zatista.com<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to his prolific work at the easel, Myers has been composing music at a rate of about one song per day using the program GarageBand. He has also been cutting numerous personal short films, many of which star his two-and-a-half-year-old son Spike.\u00a0\u201cLately all my iMovies have been Spike, of course, so I did A Hard Day\u2019s Spike,\u201d Myers says. \u201cI recreated the Hard Day\u2019s Night opening but just with footage that I had of Spike.\u201d\u00a0For Myers, this James Franco-esque multidisciplinary experimentation is essential to keeping him engaged and creating new work.\u00a0\u201cIt connects me to creativity,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is, which is to me the greatest gift my family gave me: saying that being an artist is a noble profession. At the end of the day I\u2019m an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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