As everyone who knows me knows, I have become intensely interested in the US Presidents in the last couple of years. Primarily, I am interested in these people as men. You know, people who have favorite foods, and love their pets. I am thinking about these dudes quite a bit.
A different interest that I have is making thing with my hands. It was only a matter of time before these two things married (or at least got on a path of intermittent passionate trysts). So describes the above painting.
How did I do it? I found a picture of one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Then I played around with it in Photoshop Elements until I wound up with an image that I liked. I printed that out and then transferred the main lines onto a canvas (with the help of some carbon paper) and painted it in. I decided that the canvas itself would be a television set. So, I looked around for images of TVs from the appropriate era to figure out where various knobs, buttons, or dials should go.
For those who don’t know, the Nixon-Kennedy debates were the first televised presidential candidate debates. They were significant to the outcome of this particular election, and really “changed the game” so-to-speak in presidential campaigning. Interestingly, at the end of the first televised debate, television audiences thought that Kennedy had won. Radio audiences, however, thought that Nixon had won. Here, I cannot resist adding that these debates helped Kennedy build up his image as a fresh, youthful, vigorous leader, when, in fact, he was very ill. Kennedy had suffered poor health his entire life.