In February of 2006, I officially began my "Icon" series. Syd Barrett, the original singer and songwriter for Pink Floyd, was one of my fist choices when I started decided on icons to paint. Syd Barrett had helped form Pink Floyd in 1965, but left the band after just three years, mainly due to his mental deterioration, blamed on LSD. He went on to live as a recluse, painting, and shying away from the media.
As a musician as well as a painter, I felt I was in a good place to pay an homage to Syd Barrett. I painted "Interstellar Overdrive", a smaller ink and acrylic piece, and it sold immediately. I painted Syd with a deep yellow/orange skin tone and placed him in a world full of floating orbs. It seemed fitting.
But I felt like I could do more. So in March I bought a five foot by four foot canvas and started another Syd Barrett painting in oil. Rather than using the same yellow/orange skin tone I switched to blue, and abandoned the floating orbs for a swirling sky over a desert. This time I wanted to really try to channel Syd's energy as much as I could. I listened to as much of his music as possible during the first few week of conception, always singing along and thinking "would Syd like this?"
Well, it starting becoming more and more apparent that with some of my painting choices, Syd didn't agree. I wanted to use a very deep cobalt blue for the shadows, rather than the jet black I had used on "Interstellar Overdrive". The first coat of cobalt blue, which was over a white/silver primer, turned out spotty, was way too light, and almost made him look sick with his bright blue face. The second coat looked a little better, but not much. Same with the third coat. The fourth coat looked gorgeous as I put it on, but as the cobalt blue paint dried, bizarre patches of this weird reddish/purplish color started appearing.
At this point I gave up on the idea of deep cobalt blue shadows. After three more coats of black, the painting was looking better, but still not quite right. As a result of plastering on seven layers of paint, strange texture had begun to form. So with a fine grit sandpaper I smoothed the shadow areas out, carefully rubbing the black and blue "paint-dust" back into the painting. I was able to even the texture out, but now the shadow areas were covered with these weird gray streaks. So I planned on painting another coat of black the following week.
The week passed. Then another. And then a few more. On July 8Th, I walked into my studio and told myself that I was done. I was releasing the painting.
I moved the canvas to the living room and hung it on the wall. Then later that afternoon, during a conversation with my mom, I mentioned to her that I had released the Syd Barrett painting, that I wasn't going to work on it any more. She asked me if I had heard that Syd Barrett had died the day before. I told her that I hadn't, and just stared at the painting.
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