Thriller

A little backstory on this piece.... My friend asked me a few weeks ago to do a piece for an artshow she was curating, the theme being Motown. My first thought was, 'why the hell would I do a Motown piece??' I love the genre and always have, but doing a painting for it? I said yes, jokingly saying 'I'll do it only if there can be creatures in it!'.... but deep down I thought, 'c'mon, how can I put creatures in a Motown painting????' Then the more I thought about it, I felt maybe I could do a piece that was 'normal', perhaps a cool, stylish painting of the Temptations or the Supremes. Why not, something different and out of my comfort zone.

I went to the Motown website and was reminded of all the amazing artists involved with the genre. Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, the list of insane talent went on and on. On that same list, you guessed it, The Jackson 5. I was like, cool! I'll do a piece of them, giant fro's, bellbottoms and everything

So I did some Google searches of them, looking for cool photos to reference. It only took one photo to change my mind completely about my piece. It was MJ in his classic red Thriller jacket surrounded by zombies!!!!!!!! This was on Sunday night. I needed to get a piece done before THIS Saturday's Motown art show!

So in definite rush to get it done( about two days work), here it is and I hope you guys enjoy it.

For me the best part about making this image( besides painting zombies!!), was rediscovering Michael Jacksons music. I, like many of us, have this vision of Michael Jackson: the weird, crazy 'child molester'. We don't think of him for his music anymore which is incredibly sad. I'm not defending his alleged accusations...just his musical genius, which anyone would agree, is something we will probably never see again in our lifetime.

So this is an homage to Michael the artist. And to Thriller, the video that scared the crap out of me as a kid, and probably in many ways single handedly resurrected the horror genre in the 80's.

Now go watch it again! [link]

***(all painted in Photoshop)****

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