Figurative is the NEW Abstract

Bleeding Jesuses. Lots and lots of Bleeding Jesuses, with the occasional radiant, doe-eyed Virgin thrown in for variety - that pretty much covered my early childhood exposure to figurative art. I can remember my parents discussing the purchase of some Norman Rockwell prints of old Saturday Evening Post covers, but nothing ever came of it.

In junior high school, any exposure I received to non-Bleeding Jesus figurative art was through Iron Maiden t-shirts and album covers. Which weren't really all that different from the Bleeding Jesus pictures. I think that's why I was drawn to Bill Sienkiwicz's more abstract artwork. It was about as far away from Iron Maiden and the Catholic Church as I could get, in terms of Sienkiewicz's ethic and look. It was great.

Consider Sienkiewicz's version of a Daredevil's arch nemesis, the Kingpin. The Kingpin has always looked like a tool in his purple pants, white blazer, and cravat, or as some wag at Details once said, "More P.J. O'Dork than Tom Wolfe". Sienkiwicz's version of the Kingpin, was Tony Soprano fifteen years before he made his television debut:



I love the vest and the rolled up sleeves. And the cigar? That is just gravy.

But then something funny happened on the way to the comic book shop. I stopped at the library. Paging through a Stephen King novel, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, I was sucked in by the illustrations Phil Hale did for the novel.

Part of the appeal of those paintings that Phil Hale did was the fact that his idea of a "Western" look was exactly in sync with what I thought the American Old West looked like: the Spain of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. Sorry, Michael Whelan fans: Roland is "The Man With No Name" and not just some generic cowpoke featured on a Louis L'amour cover.

The other thing that I couldn't articulate at the time, but can now, is the fact that Phil Hale was working within a style that I was familiar with (Norman Rockwell) BUT, unlike the carbon copy Bleeding Jesuses and Eddies that I saw everywhere, was also moving that style forward.

Rockwell is good at capturing a specific moment in time and freezing it, the moment that everybody sees and remembers. Hale has firm grip on "bullet time", for lack of a better term. It's like Hale can capture events that the viewer would never be able to see with the naked eye if they were to occur in real time.

So thank you, Phil Hale. The Bleeding Jesuses and Eddies have never been my cup of tea. However, I don't think I'd enjoy those John William Waterhouse prints that my sweetie pie hung on our bedroom wall quite as much if it wasn't for your earlier outreach efforts in the pages of a Stephen King novel.