Art Muses (Flying Around Two Rolls of Blank Canvas)

ink & acrylic on acrylic sheet, 30" x 41", (c) 2011 by Howard Salmon

This is a painting about artistic inspiration. As you can see, the picture is divided into two diagonals. The lower diagonal shows two rolls of raw canvas, leaning against each other.  The upper diagonal shows six art muses, who look modern and stylish, compared to Raphael's cherubs. They've each got a severe Manga-styled hair cut. Their facial features include three eyes, two of which are lined up vertically (a Picasso-esque touch), and lips drawn in the style of golden aged comic book molls.  Their skin is painted a metallic gold: a reference to the art and people of Mesoamerica (which I regard the Arizona Southwest as a part of).   The muses actually look like bats with bosoms (or "angry birds"), but I'm cool with that: it has a certain "noir" quality that I like. The little line of a river in the background is supposed to reference the river in the background of the Mona Lisa (apparently, one of Leonardo da Vinci's artistic innovations was the addition of naturalistic background behind a portrait ;the river in the "Mona Lisa" was a new thing for portrait painters). At the lower left is a tube of paint, with the cap off, and with paint already squeezed out by some anonymous artist.