Folks, when there’s things to do not because you oughtta when you run from love with no reason notta..Okay, that’s another article for upcoming summer and Jonathan Richman…Here’s a question: Who were the most influential or definitive singing voices of the 60’s in your life? Male? Female?
I started this painting as an homage to the great Ronette, Ronnie Spector. She is probably my favorite all time female vocalist. I am not being sexist, I just want to keep this open to have a favorite male vocalist too. It is very hard to pinpoint one voice as a favorite and subconsciously I found out I couldn’t do this. Just listen to “Baby I Love You” or “Walking in the Rain”, if you are NOT touched by the beauty, the tenderness, the sexuality/sensuality of her voice..Wow!! is all I have to say. These examples are what makes life worth living. There is a scene in a Woody Allen movie where he can’t imagine life without The Marx Brothers (I am simplifying here…I am in total agreement with Woody on this). I can’t imagine a world where we don’t have the beauty of The Ronettes or The Crystals or Tina Turner. This brings up Phil Spector. That will be another article. His art/music was amazing but as a person, eash…Regardless, Ronnie Spector is truly up there on The Big Huerta’s hierarchy. Tina Turner I dig too. “River Deep, Mountain High”, “Proud Mary”, even the “newer” material “What’s Love Got to do with It” is classic Tina. Her shimmying and shaking drove many a man to his knees. She has just an awesome, regal presence when she hits a stage. You can tell that performing and singing is what she was born to do.
Now dig, I drew this out in pencil before I attacked it on canvas. Weirdly enough, I got the hair, I got the eyes…but then a very strange thing happened when I got to the nose….from the nose down she turned into Tina Turner! I did not try to do this. I tell ya, I don’t have that much control of my painting! So somehow she turned into this monster of the 60’s. A prototype if you will, Tina Spector. Can you imagine some mad scientist coming up wih this perfect rock and roll creation?! Maybe Ike Turner’s spirit was somewhere lurking in the garage and wanted me to pay his partner some sort of due. I even tried changing the nose and just couldn’t do it…worked for a long time trying to make this painting look like Ronnie. Finally, I figured it wasn’t meant to be for some strange reason. So hence…
This is another painting where I used a metallic spray paint to start as a base. Threw pink and blue on there just because these are always the colors that male and females are associated with at birth. I just wanted to keep this portrait very simple with no extraneous baggage to take away from the intensity of their work and beauty, a sign of respect, if you will. I am glad and truly honored that people have told me that they enjoy and appreciate these paintings that I do in respect of the folks that have influenced and shaped my life. It is fun, helps me out and maybe this is what I am supposed to be doing instead of mowing the lawn and replacing cat litter….nah…