For most of December I have been working on a private commission which is now finished and has been seen by the buyer who I am glad to say is very happy with it. It is based around a short story by George RR Martin called "The Meathouse Man", a quite sleazy story I might add about a time in the future when huge mines and factories litter the landscape belching out unhealthy sulfurous smoke into an atmosphere so polluted that the sky is yellow. The workers have the ability to direct possibly brain dead workers as kind of drones to dig up the earth with huge machines that then is taken to factories for ... whatever they do with it. The sleazy aspect to the story is that in their recreation time the workers visit what are called Meathouses where brain dead women are there to cater for their every whim and desire that may occur to them... so it ain't exactly a story with a lot of political correctness! Hey don't blame me, I didn't write it!
After much deliberation on coming up with a decent composition I decided to go back to the buildings I used in "Main Street Apocalypse" as the basis for the Meathouses and have them dominated by the huge factories belching out the poisonous smoke. I wanted the factory to look like the hellish landscape of the Victorian Industrial Revolution and indeed as you follow the factory back on the right hand side it does indeed turn into the hell of a Bosch painting (hopefully!). I liked the idea of a traditional American Main Street turned into a sleazy line of Meathouses.
I decided to base the whole painting around a yellow/violet colour complementary with the warm yellows of the sky contrasted against the tawdry violets of the Meathouses. The buyer asked for a couple of figures in it including a guy having a cigarette somewhere (right hand side under the pink lighting) and some signage saying "Fresh Girls" which I duly obliged by having it painted on the side of the nearest Meathouse.
Oil on linen 30" x 20". Below is "Main Street Apocalypse" for comparison:
