“Flick Chicks” Chuck Middlekauff

“Movies and TV have been entertaining me all my life. As a kid, it was Saturday afternoon theater matinees, cartoons, and my favorite cowboy heroes on TV. As a teenager and an adult, it was more mature-themed movies and TV sitcoms. I had my favorite movie and TV stars and that’s what inspired this painting,  “Flick Chicks”.

I had many male stars and role models, but I also had crushes on the female stars both young and old. Even the ones in the cartoons.

One of my concepts for the past few years has been to make a “painting of a painting in progress.” My art tools tended to accumulate on my “masterpiece” as I worked, and I found this very interesting and appealing, so I started painting them into my paintings. I also noticed that the canvas, and my hands and shirt, got pretty messy from the accidental drips, drops, splats, and smearing of the watercolors or acrylics as I worked. I also liked those. So I added them to my paintings, too.

Anyway, my working methods have produced paintings that incorporate and exaggerate my painting process. And my style has evolved into a mixture of chaos and control…or is it controlled chaos? Whatever!

This playful direction in my work is fun, exciting, entertaining, and visually stimulating to me, and I hope the viewer gets it.

Finally, I try to come up with interesting, clever, and fun titles to tie into the visuals of my paintings. For this one, I considered how I would handle images of female TV and movie characters/stars and the film industry out in California. Working with word associations, I came up with women, girls, females, broads, actresses, etc. Then I thought about movies, Hollywood, TV, film, theater, etc., and slang words for them.

So I came up with the slang term for females:  Chicks   And the slang word for movies:  Flicks 

I had collaged a 45 RPM record of the Beach Boys’ song, “California Girls”, and thought that might be my title, but I think “Flick Chicks” works even better.

By the way…I do occasionally shed a tear or two watching “Chick Flicks” with my wife, Carol.”   Chuck Middlekauff