It’s my boy. He was three weeks old when I painted this. He does not really look like Frankenstein.

After finishing my second solo show this year (see details at FluidBeauty.com), I’m just about to get started on this year’s Halloween paintings. I’m also going to make a book that will contain every Halloween painting, sculpture and colorform.

More info soon.

For now though, I’m sticking this here so I can find it easily.

When I spoke with him he was trying to joke around but I was so focused on thanking him and showing him some of my paintings (and worried about making people behind me in line wait to meet him) that I wasn’t able to joke back. If you’re reading this Rob, I’m usually more laid back.

Anyway, I think he got the message I was grateful for his inspiration because I said it about five times. He liked my “Living Dead Girl” painting and cracked a smile at my “Donkey Kong” painting which was all I hoped for. I told him about how I tried to paint like Basil Gogos with my Frankenstein painting (I discovered Basil Gogos through Rob Zombie’s intro in a book about Mr. Gogos. See the amazing art of Basil Gogos at basilgogos.net)

I forgot to show him my take on Picasso and my FrankenPatrick but it was just a great, cool, fun experience. Thanks to Rob and to ILoveAllAccess.com for the opportunity.

Later in the night I remembered about a half dozen questions I wanted to ask him and I realized I didn’t tell him this was my seventh Zombie show. Oh well. The show, by the way, was one of the best I’ve seen of his. If you get a chance, you should try to see him live.

And Rob – if you haven’t read it yet there’s kind words below and a link to that Picasso painting I wanted to show you. Thanks!

Original post:
On 12/04/09, courtesy of a VIP package, I’ll get to meet Rob Zombie at the Electric Factory in Philly. If I’m able to convince him to stop by here, I hope he reads this:

Mr. Zombie, thanks a million for committing to a career of monster rock, illustration, comics, and movies. There’s a lot of easier ways to make a living and your career has not only given me a soundtrack for the Fall of every year, but inspires me to be true to myself and the kind of art I want to make.

Your music has influenced my art, and become part of my life. I can’t really thank you enough for making that music. It’s made my life more fun during good times and put a smile on my face during some bad times.

My wife and I have thrown a Halloween party for all our friends for the past fourteen years. Each year I create a series of Halloween-themed or horror-inspired paintings of my friends. I’m always listening to your music while I paint these.

Here’s a painting inspired by Living Dead Girl and a few of my favorite paintings I’ve done over the years. If you’ve read this far, thanks again. If you want to see all 95 of those paintings, you can go to the gallery. If you’re really into the Steve Cleff Experience, you can also check out FluidBeauty.com which is my site for my other style of painting.

Living Dead Girl

Some of my favorites

If you ever want to collaborate on some art, let me know.
Thanks
Steve Cleff

Next year, at least five more. That’ll make it 100 Halloween paintings.

Meanwhile, since this post will be up for quite a while, if you’re curious about what I’ve done, here’s a link to the gallery and the paintings from last year.

These are fantastic. Good art, bad art, good films, and some wonderfully, wonderfully bad films. I have to see a lot of movies.

Typically, I try and work new friends we’ve made that year into the paintings, and we had started hanging out quite a bit with the members and significant others of the band the Red Stanleys. I had grand plans for all of the Stanleys to be in these paintings, but ran out of time. So this year, I got to finish the project I had planned for ’05. Originally these were to be in three separate paintings, but the theme this year necessitated that I combine them.

Background on the 2005 paintings

Like the years prior, I had collected a list of friends who I wanted to be in the paintings, and sent out e-mails asking who wanted to be what. I claimed vampire, and I can’t remember if Trish chose to be Samara from the Ring before or during the project.

There was a high amount of movie-themed paintings, and I suppose that says something about how cultural stories are passed along, or concepts are introduced, or I should say, were introduced since so much of that happens on the web now. That actually inspired my next year’s theme and I believe was the beginning of me choosing a theme a year in advance. So, yeah, I know what 2009 will be already.

I didn’t want to just rip-off movies in 2005, so I put some thought into the paintings and tried to pull out what makes each type of monster or movie special.

I don’t know how well the paintings conveyed this, but they helped me make some decisions when doing them.

Here they are:

Carrie – coming of age
Halloween – empowerment
Hellraiser – temptation
Dracula – sexuality
Zombies – allegory (commuters are zombies, get it? you ride the train to work and tell me it’s not true)
Chucky/Timmy – satire
Ring – terror
Chainsaw Massacre – gore

These are what I see in these movies (or movie genres in the case of zombies) not what I’m trying to say. Like I said, it gave me structure.

It was a lot of fun, I learned some things about horror movies, and the painting I did of me with three Trish’s is consistently people’s favorite painting. The idea came from the intersection of me always telling Trish the only way she could be better is if there were two of her and my thinking about how I wanted to be Dracula.

I put them here so it’s easier for me to find.

January
9
Autopsy (After Dark) — Hospital-style hell. Often attempted, rarely well.
The Broken (After Dark) — Lena Headey. Richard Jenkins. Evil doppelganger. Slick flick.
The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (After Dark) — A theatrical-release sequel to a DTV sequel. Weird.
Dying Breed (After Dark) — Horror from down unda’. Familiar but effective. I dug it.
From Within (After Dark) — Also known as The Tribeca Nap.
Perkins’ 14 (After Dark) — A bunch of brainwashed folks go psycho. Sounds cool.
Slaughter (After Dark) — Chick moves to a haunted farm. Really?
The Unborn (Rogue) — David Goyer. Undead kid. Cloverfield hottie. PG-13.
Voices (After Dark) — Occult from Korea.
16
My Bloody Valentine 3-D (Lionsgate) — Good, goofy, gory fun. Find a 3-D theater.
23
Donkey Punch (Magnet) — Stylish, nasty, sexy, speedy.
The Lodger (Sony) — It was a book before Hitchcock got there. Solid cast, too.
Outlander (Third Rail) — Aliens, Vikings & Monsters. Oh my.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Screen Gems) — Aren’t we about due for Underworld vs. Resident Evil?
30
The Uninvited (Paramount) — Remake of the excellent Tale of Two Sisters. PG-13.

February
13
Friday the 13th (WB) — I’ve gone from bleah to hmm to yeah! (Still, fingers crossed.)

March
13
The Horsemen (Lionsgate) — Dennis Quaid, serial killers, and apocalyptic horror. Sign me up.
Race to Witch Mountain (Disney) — Included because I like kids.

April
24
Obsessed (Screen Gems) — Hottie stalker goes psycho. These just never get old.

May
15
Angels & Demons (Columbia) — With a title like that, it’s gotta be a horror movie. Right?
29
Drag Me to Hell (Universal) — Raimi’s first horror movie since Evil Dead 2. Woohoo!

June
19
The Haunting in Connecticut (Lionsgate) — The trailer is actually pretty solid!

July
24
Orphan (WB) — More evil kids! And Vera Farmiga, Nice.
Piranha 3-D (Dimension) — Should be the best movie of the whole year.

August
21
Final Destination 4: Death Trip 3-D — Yep, you read that right.
28
Halloween 2 (Dimension) — Zombie insisted he wouldn’t do the sequel, but guess what?

September
11
Daybreakers (Lionsgate) — Futuristic vampires and Willem Defoe. Awesome.
Whiteout (WB) — Kate Beckinsale and the Antarctic slasher, Double awesome.
18
Jennifer’s Body (Fox) — Diablo Cody, Megan Fox, possessed cheerleader. Yes, please.
25
The Crazies (Overture) — Has this even gone into production yet?

October
2
Sorority Row (Summit) — Wow, someone actually remade The House on Sorority Row. How odd.
9
Zombieland (Columbia) — Woody Harrelson horror comedy. But is it coming this year?
16
The Stepfather (Screen Gems) — Stop raiding my DVD stack!
23
Saw 6 (Lionsgate) — Yep. Six.

November
6
The Box (WB) — Richard Kelly doin’ Richard Matheson. Sounds good. Still … Cameron Diaz?
The Wolfman (Universal) — I dig the director (Joe Johnston) and the lead (Benicio Del Toro), so who knows?
20
New Moon (Summit) — aka Twilight 2. Brace yourselves, ladies

In 2004 I had a theme that was probably the trickiest to describe to my friends/models. Now, the Celebrity culture is pretty mainstream and people in flyover states know what TMZ is, but in 2004, when I explained my goal of painting pictures of my friends as if they were on photoshoots for the cover of Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair, I got some blank stares. Eventually they just trusted me and it worked. I’d like to do the picture of Trish and myself over, but I knew I was going to paint a lot of Trish and of myself and I knew I needed to get a painting of Manning in there, since he’s pretty much family now. I couldn’t think of a more appopriate painting to choose than Famous Manning since he’s kinda Web Famous. I have to give him credit for my favorite touch of this new version which is the logos on the backdrop. It’s also pretty common to see them now compared to ’04 and makes it easier to communicate the “celebrity” aspect of the theme. It makes me want to paint more pop culture stuff to be able to look back on it later. Anyway, here’s the set from ’04.