Explodin Joe Coleman

Do not look at Joe Coleman's paintings while eating spaghetti and milk.
The man looks like a freakshow ringmaster from America's south, almost like a pedophilic uncle in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family or something. He also has an "adopted" son, Junior, which naturally is a deformed but smiling foetus/baby in a jar, residing in a room in his apartment named 'The Odditorium' alongside other fucked up shit, like locks of serial killer's hair. In his younger days in the 70's during one of his performance art shows, he rigged real explosives to his body and threatened to blow himself up in front of the audience, and then preceded to throw frogs, crickets at them while he bit the heads off mice, which he hurled at them too. To finish his performance, he pulled a loaded shotgun on them.


Kodak Family Moment - Joe, wife Whitney, son Junior, and what looks like a stuffed Fidel Castro.


He paints fucked-up but obviously interesting subjects of that nature too (think Charles Manson, Hell, torture...all the cool stuff in life) in a style that wouldn't look out of place in MAD Magazine. But it is the detail in which he creates these beasts that is fucking amazing. They are so intricate, and there is so much going on all over the place, it is like reading a story. Or trying to find that elusive bastard Wally in a Where's Wally book while getting distracted by all the other funny stuff happening all over the place. I can't come to imagine how long it would take to create them. Joe is possibly the most interesting person I will never get to meet. Simply because I would be too pussy to ever talk to him.






Some of these pictures aren't large enough and don't show you enough of the detail, but sorry that's the best that I could find. Check out his website though....

www.joecoleman.com