Original Painting - Acrylic on canvas 20x16The tenth painting in my "Sin, sex, and cigarettes" series features a sinister, armed man silhouetted by harsh lights in a wet and foggy alley. I don't know if there was ever a pulp novel with this title, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was. Available from the artist $950.00
I have been asked why I have chosen to create these paintings as a tribute to the lurid pulp covers of the past. I can remember that as a boy I would take the bus to downtown Milwaukee for a day at the public museum and library. Afterwards I would go to the old bookstore on Wisconsin Avenue. The musty smelling basement level was filled with pulp magazines, paperbacks, and comic books all at half off the cover price. Then I realized that these magazines were priced at .10 cents to .75 cents apiece before the discount! I loaded up on Weird Tales, science fiction, Southsea Adventures, True Detective, Amazing Stories and comics. The tantalizing element of the cover art was the mystery of the unexplained dramatic action and exotic locations portrayed, even though the stories rarely lived up to my high expectations. The melodramatic covers of pulp magazines helped influence and shape my art. I want these paintings to function as illustrations for unwritten stories. Back then, the cover art and captions of the pulps captured my imagination and fired my sense of wonder and adventure!