Inspiration and passion are the main ingredients that make up a great painting. And you can't always find them at the museum or a fancy pants gallery. Sometimes those works of art are for sale for $20 at the local flea market. The artists are unheralded and didn't get rich off their canvases, but they had something buzzing around their head that just had to be visualized with pigment.
Of course, 90% of all art is awful, including many pieces that are acclaimed and sell for millions.
A giant cynical Jeff Koons 2 story high heart ornament, the 27th guy who thought painting a canvas just white was clever, Cy Twombly closing his eyes and spasming pencil scrawls on paper and pompous installations that consist of random piles of foam rubber.
They've excelled at something else, the amazing trick of making people THINK that their work is valuable, and a sincere hats off to them for doing so!
On the other hand, 90% of the discarded, unwanted and inexpensive pieces of art at your local thrift, garage sale and church bazaar also stink.
But once in awhile, something thought bad, will go so far around the bend that'll your eyes will bug out, sweat will bead on your back and your heart will race in awe
(or at least scratch your head in wonder).
I'm sure also the inclination to root for the anonymous underdog, instead of the heralded artist with a private jet, was a motivating factor.
What follows are the highlights of what I've run across.
They're hanging at the M.O'C manor, or I've photographed them from others like minded art lovers collections, or they've been hanging around the internet and I plucked them down ...for you!
Along with the visionary Sunday painters, I'm sure some are by illustrators that are taking a break from paying work with a personal itch, a high school art assignment, or actual mass marketed art (a fondness for velvet paintings and big-eyed subjects will become apparent)
that are just so wrong they're right.
BTW- Clown painting (of which I'm showing a few highlights) are so amazing and numerous, that they deserve a Blog of their own-
Also, if you enjoy these, along the same lines, pick up the books "Thrift Store Paintings" by Jim Shaw and "The Museum of Bad Art" by Tom Stankowicz and Marie Jackson, today!
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