This picture only became “American Selfie” half way through it’s development over a period of around 5 months. It started out as one of my ‘fake art’ pieces (see earlier posts), extracting and magnifying sections of one of my earlier paintings , ‘After the Bombing, Yemen’. These extracts then suggested a resemblance to certain structures, which I incorporated within the new work. These were primarily either faces or figures, and one in particular reminded me a little of a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and Donald Trump.
For better or for worse, I decided to take the latter course, so the picture started to take shape as an allegory or commentary on Trump’s America. Early on the idea of making Trump appear as one of the faces on a reimagined Mount Rushmore seemed apt. Originally in my first sketch and draft painting on paper, Obama was there too, but by the time I moved to the canvas for the final painting, Obamam had been replaced by Rupert Murdoch, highlighting the importance of the Fox Network in promoting Trump.
However the ‘selfie’ part of the iamge had still not surfaced. In the original draft, the large grotesque figure at the front had been more zombie like with a hand outsretched towards the veiwer. This grotesque figure gradually morphed into a couple, one of who was aiming a gun towards the viewer. Finally the gun was transferred to a new sniper character (and upgraded to an AK47), and replaced with the iPhone with which the couple snap a selfie along with the rest of the cast.
Other figures changed throughout the process – Beyonce was once in there, and the kneeling Kaepernick had previously been both the fallen statue from Guernica and the peasant about to be shot from Goya’s The 3rd of May. Besides Trump, three figures that remained constant through out the process were Facebook character as the devil shown on the left, the fascist saluting, and the police suspect/victim on the right.
The overall impression is meant to be one of a chaotic and dark scene reflecting the current state of the USA. A final very thin dark wash was applied across the whole surface to help darken the image and make it more closely resemble the finish and look of an old master.