Curio: Rich Pellegrino's Portraits

"Marty McFly" gouache
on hardboard, 5 x 7

Alexa here with your weekly art appreciation.

Nathaniel shared a link to this artist's work with me and I just had to blog it. Rich Pellegrino is a painter, RISD graduate, and child of the 80s. He paints in watercolor, acrylic, or gouache, straight out of the tube, creating richly textured portraits that are almost musical. ("I want a brush stroke to sound like a distorted A chord. You know -- something loud and visceral.")

It's not surprising that many of his subjects are musicians, but he's also inspired by film (especially the work of Guillermo Del Toro, who he calls a master of color and light).

Here is a selection of some of his colorful film characters. You can buy prints at his shop, too!

"Jack" (from The Darjeeling Limited) and "Audrey"

"Willy Wonka" and "Sobchak"

(Both from Gallery 1988 Crazy4Cult Group Show)

"Rosario Dawson/Zooey Dechanel"

Linkville

Serious Film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory = Se7en. lol.
The Playlist Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim) names his favorite musicals.
Low Resolution Nekked James McAvoy and the failings of the internet.

ooh, thanks E.T. LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS sneak!

i09 wonders how TV can repeat the success of Smallville. But I have to ask: why does it have to be a teen angst show? There's a million different ways of doing superheroes. Unfortunately people are only trying two of those ways. You can get away with generic at the movies while the genre is at its peak, but peaks don't last forever and if everything keeps feeling "samey" eventually people will get bored.
Geekscape 10 strangest tv and film adaptations ever.
Extra Criticum takes issue with "The New Yorker"'s take on The Kids Are All Right.

Finally, CHUD collects some photoshopped tomfoolery about Inception and calls it a "meme". Oh internets you confuse me. A meme used to just be a thing everyone was passing around like surveys or questionnaires or themes like blog-a-thons without the date specificity. Now apparently it's about lolcat style photo-captioning? I can't keep up internets. But some of them are funny so read the post. And this is really the last time I'm going to mention this movie (until precursor season at least) because I'm so bored with it now. Fast fade... just not enough left to the imagination so how can the imagination stay engaged?