Ten Years of Veeptopus


Ten years ago this month, I started an insane project that inadvertently launched my art career: I drew portraits of every U.S. vice president with an octopus on his head.

The series started as a giddy, over-caffeinated idea that I took way too far. In July 2013, shortly after getting laid off from a grueling corporate job, a friend invited me to participate in the From Dusk til Drawn fundraiser at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara. Basically, it involved drawing for 24 straight hours. At that point in my life – i.e. before children – sleep deprivation was a novelty. It sounded insane. I was in.

The artist at work.

The last thing I wanted was to be struggling to think of ideas of something to draw in the middle of the night. I needed to do a series, I thought. So after some debate, I decided to do portraits of all 47 vice presidents of the United States. Why? I don’t know.

I’ve always been quietly obsessed with the vice presidency. It is, after all, the fifth wheel of the Executive Branch. The constitution has little to say about the actual duties of the veep aside from presiding over the Senate and wondering about the president’s health. The wording of the Constitution was so vague that when William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia after a lengthy and ill-advised inaugural speech, it wasn’t immediately clear that his veep, John Tyler, would ascend to the presidency or serve under the title of “acting president.” The ambiguity wasn’t cleared up until 1967 with the ratification of the 25th Amendment.

Vice presidents were all ambitious men who could see the pinnacle of power but, save for a few, never quite got there. Instead, for much of American history, they were political afterthoughts -- ignored and forgotten. Woodrow Wilson’s wife and close advisors kept Thomas Marshall in the dark for 18 months about the president’s incapacitating stroke, thus denying him the presidency. FDR only met with Truman once before he died in the middle of WWII. And LBJ so relentlessly teased Hubert Humphrey during cabinet meetings that the veep reportedly broke down and cried. No wonder then that John Nance Garner, FDR’s first VP, said that the job wasn’t worth a “warm bucket of piss.”

That night I ended up drawing 23 of the (then) 46 vice presidents. I hadn’t really drawn much since high school. Those first drawings were rough. When I got back home in Los Angeles, I vowed to complete the set. But then a funny thing happened: my drawing skills improved. My Truman was way better than my John Adams. I realized that I would need to redraw everything. And then when I got to Truman again, I realized I had to redraw all of them one more time. A few I had to redraw even more times. I never could get Al Gore right so I just put a tentacle over his face.

At that point, I decided to launch an Etsy store. To my surprise, people seemed to like my weird project. My work was featured on sites like Boing Boing, Buzzfeed, and The New York Times. That eventually led to me successfully funding a Kickstarter to make a Veeptopus Book.

It’s been a long crazy decade. I don’t really do octopuses anymore but you can buy the Veeptopus book, prints, and even a limited-edition poster.













The Signing of the Declaration of Independence sans Slave Owners

Happy belated 4th of July.

I just wanted to show you a drawing I did a few years ago of John Turnbell’s famous 1818 painting Declaration of Independence with all the slave owners removed. When I drew it, I went through the painting and to the best of my ability figured out who were slave owners and who were not. There are depressingly few people remaining in the picture, as you can see.

Prints are available for this work here on my online store.

Pink Donuts and Unidentified Women Coming to a Gallery Near You

Hello everyone!

Summer is here. Though I’m taking a break from the art biz for a couple of weeks, I wanted to let you know about a couple of exhibitions I’m in next month.

My painting Pink Donut is going to be a part of an upcoming “Delicious” show at Studio Gallery in San Francisco. This is one of my favorite works I’ve done this year. It came out looking like a still from an episode of Twin Peaks directed by Michael Mann. That show runs from June 8 - July 3, 2023.


Across the Bay, I’ll be showing four works over at Shoh Gallery in Berkeley for their Summer show, including Dennis, Phyllis, Unidentified Woman, and Sunday Afternoon. That show will run from the middle of June through to the middle of August. Stop by!

Cheers

Jonathan

Just Hung Some of My Favorite Paintings in Santa Barbara Wine Country

This past weekend, I hung some of my favorite paintings at Lo-Fi Wines in Los Alamos in the heart of Santa Barbara wine country. 

Last year during that dead week between Christmas and New Year's, we traveled there on the way to meet my in-laws in L.A. Los Alamos is a really cute small town and clusters around a single street. Our motel was on one side of the street and a couple of tasting rooms were on the other. The first place we visited had some pretty good wine. The place was filled with antiques and the owner seemed very keen on lecturing us about the joys of the mandolin. We bought a Chardonnay but didn’t stick around. 

The next place we went to was Lo-Fi. The place was decorated with mid-century furniture and boomerang linoleum. Tribe Called Quest was playing on a turntable. I felt at home. During the tasting, I asked about the paintings on the wall which were a series of splashy abstracts. Craig, the co-owners, said that he was looking to change up the art as he poured me a Malbec with a spicy finish. We exchanged emails.

The paintings I selected for Lo-Fi were all fire-themed, including my House Fire series, my Oil Fire series, and my large oil field painting that I wrote about earlier, Metaphor. I also hung a couple of prints from my online store including Cul de Sac and Golden State Dr. 

Anyway, stop by. Drink some wine. Take a gander at my work.

Blue Van Prints Now Available!

Ever since I started painting in a serious fashion, people have asked me if I sell prints of my work. I've wanted to. Prints are great. They cost much less than original work and they are less imposing than a canvas.

So now, finally, prints of my painting Blue Van are now available in my shop. This is still one of my all time favorites. This is a closed run with less than a dozen prints available. The prints are 20x20" with a two inch border printed on thick paper. Each print will be numbered and signed.

I also still have updated Veeptopus posters, complete with Kamala Harris. Get one before they are gone!

New Painting: Out By the Gourds

My latest painting is of my paternal grandfather and is called Out By the Gourds. He was a quiet man with a stern face and who was literally born in a log cabin in Oklahoma Territory. He died when I was a child. My primary memory of him was of him tending his Eden-like garden, which grew all sorts of delights like boysenberries, carrots, tomatoes and these massive gourds. He would dry the gourds by a tree in the middle of the yard. The one time I remember him angry with me was, in a fit of youthful enthusiasm, I accidentally smashed a long banana-shaped gourd against the tree. The photo that inspired this painting was taken under that same tree. He more or less had the same expression on his face in every picture I’ve seen of him.

I thought that this was going to a quick portrait. I went in, Alice Neel style, without an under drawing. Of course, Alice Neel became Alice Neel after painting for decades. I still have a lot to learn. It took a really long time for the painting to finally gel and tell me what it needed. Fortunately, oil paint takes a long time to dry. You can push it around the canvas until you’re done.

Below is a video I made of this painting’s long torturous process.

REMINDER: Silicon Valley Open Studios Is This Weekend!

Just a quick reminder: this weekend – September 18 and 19th – I will be exhibiting as a part of Silicon Valley Open Studios up in Gallery House in Palo Alto. I’ll be in the gallery on Saturday from 10am to 2pm and perhaps a bit longer after that. Stop by and say hi!

Unidentified Woman - color corrected.jpg

I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of paintings I’ll be showing. I selected some of my favorite smaller works from the past couple of years. The painting above, for instance – Unidentified Woman – was made late last year after the skies over the Bay Area turned an uncanny orange/red color. I made three paintings in a sort of miniseries about that sky – Blue Van and Unidentified Car were the other two.

Unidentified Woman clearly articulates themes that I usually only hint at in my work. A man sits in a car from the early 1960s looking at his rearview mirror. In the background is the almost spectral figure of a woman. The connection between the two is unclear, but it doesn't look like anything good. The air is thick with a noxious-looking pink fog. The tangible objects in the picture all look like they are from the middle of the 20th Century, the American Century. The intangible conveys a very 21st Century feeling of unease.


The painting below is Tuesday 2 pm. It's small, only 12x12, but it's one of my favorites. I painted it during the depths of the COVID lockdown when everyone was terrified to leave the house and the country ground to a halt. I think this painting nailed the feeling of that time.

Tuesday 2pm.12x12 OilonCanvas_medium.jpg

Anyway, that's just two of the works that will be showing at SVOS. I have a bunch more. You can see many of them here on the Gallery House website.