I never really got into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My first exposure, I think, was when a group of adults was talking about how absurd it was that a comic like that could ever become popular when the very premise was conceived by a couple of drunk guys. I don't know the story of how it was conceived or anything like that, but hearing adults talk about it like that when I was maybe ten or twelve years old made me think it was a media product that I was probably too smart for. That's the kind of kid I was. I identified as smart, mostly.
Now, as I coast into mid-life, the Turtles have popped up in a strange place: my podcast feed. A certain comedian has decided to make a point of how little he knows about TMNT. I think he was like me, he identified as smart, and therefore was repelled by the idea of the turtles.
But anyway I've been thinking about them, and I was listening to an episode of a podcast where the turtles were being discussed while working on the initial layers of this painting, which include text (which is buried) that reads "heroes in the half shell" and a big sort of graphical design with "TP" and "turtle power" written in smaller (but still 3 inch high) letters underneath. You can still make out most of the word "power" in the lower right of the final composition.
Look, all I know is that they were four regular pet turtles, and something happened to make them mutant, and a rat taught them how to be ninjas, and then they fought crime. I learned from Scott Auckerman that a line of the theme song for the cartoon series, describing what are presumably the most salient qualities of the four turtles, is "Donatello Does Machines (that's a fact jack!)".
I don't have any idea what it means to do a machine. I mean, I have an idea what it might mean, but I don't think that was what was being implied in the late 80's animated television series.
This painting was made with the highest quality Golden acrylics and Liquitex acrylic pouring medium and the new Sharpie Extreme fade resistant variant of the classic indelible marker. It is painted on medium weight 12 oz unprimed cotton canvas. The composition is highly layered, but there are parts of the painting where the raw canvas background is exposed. Each layer provides new content but also serves as a screen that obscures contend on layers underneath. The layering creates a sense of three dimensional space within the painting, like it is a space that can draw you in, let you explore, and think about things in a different way.
