My painting in the film The Maiden Heist

My painting The Lonely Maiden is starring alongside Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken and William H. Macy in the upcoming film The Maiden Heist.
When I first met with the director he opened up the Gabriel Weisberg book Beyond Impressionism: the Naturalist Impulse, (which is probably the most worn out book on my shelf) and said "we need something like this" a painting in the manner of Naturalist painters George Clausen, Emile Friant and Jules Bastien Lepage. I had to finish the painting in 7 days, it normally would have taken me a month or longer to do something this size. I got artist model Toni Czechorosky help me out with the period costume.
The story is about museum security guard Roger (Christopher Walken) who's favorite painting The Lonely Maiden is being sold to a European museum to make room for a modern installation of Dung art. Roger and two other guards come up with a plan to steal the original painting and replace it with a reproduction. Tony and I got to see a screening of the film and we thought it was hilarious. Make sure to go out and see it when its released and tell your friends too because it probably wont have a huge advertising budget. Here's an article about the film in Artnews.
Thanks to Jennifer Long at Film Art LA for getting me the Maiden Heist project.

Christopher Walken with the painting.

Representaional Art in the Film: Local Color

I just saw a screening of the movie Local Color, written and directed by fellow So-cal painter George Gallo. I've never seen the French Easel featured so much in a film or a lead actor dropping names like Nicolai Fechin or John F. Carlson, or even talk about local color. The story is based on the director's life, as an 18 year old in the 1970's wanting to learn to paint representational in a time when the art world considered realistic painting old fashioned and irrelevant. The main character finds a bitter old master Russian painter who he persuades to teach him to paint. In one funny scene Seroff (the Russian master) is asked to judge an exhibition of "progressive" art, and after getting an obfuscating explanation about a minimalist painting by the artist, he storms out and gives the award to the air conditioner because "it's the only F-ing thing that works". In another great scene, Seroff shows some modern art paintings to an art dealer who then goes nuts over them until he's told they were made by Down Syndrome kids. So, if you have an appreciation for representational painting you need to go see it when it comes out December 5th. According to George everything in the movie really happened to him.

Check out the trailer on the apple site. You can also see some clips on the movie's website.