Deep Dive: The Boys Are Back in Town with Billy Schenck and Greg Miller

In his new series of reimagined, cheeky portraiture from Picasso, Titian, Botticelli, Klimt, and Vermeer, Greg Miller plays with mixed media elements of vintage posters from the 1960s, gold leaf, and punched out pages from To Kill a Mockingbird. Evoking a sense of history, as well as magic, the historical influences of his recent painted works transcend time. Often using historical texts, illustrations, newspaper and photographs as a base, Miller completes the works with elements of typography, as well as the painted form, resulting in visual landscapes of great narrative depth.

Incorporating carefully selected word and passages, Miller only utilizes text that he believes spreads a message of positivity. As seen through ‘Until justice is real’ in Real, and “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible” in Pop, Miller prioritizes the communication and viewership of his audience. With the juxtapositions of image and text, Miller builds on the history of pop culture and media appropriation to establish new, contemporary narratives.

“I’m a contemporary cave painter, an archaeologist of sorts,” says Miller. “Imagery comes from old art books, garbage cans, book stores (if any are left), junk piles, walls… My paintings that I am creating are contemporary appropriations— All inspirations that I draw from in my work, past, present, and future.”

This exploration between past, present, and future simultaneously reveals the connection between advertising, urban environments, and social histories through the fastidious and painstaking recreation of age, grit, and time in his work. Utilizing the front, sides, and backs of his panels, each is a peek into art history’s visual language, symbols, and consumerism.

Taking a contemporary approach to the iconic subject matter of cowboys and the Western Frontier, Schenck, who himself resides on a ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico blends a pop sensibility with a true love for the Wild West as portrayed in classic Hollywood films.

“For me,” Schenck explains, “the western myth is a metaphor for many aspects of life in general. It has the ability to keep expanding like a parallel to the expanding universe.

Alike to The Boys Are Back in Town’s light-hearted platitudes about the joys of seeing old friends again, partying, and taking advantage of the summer months whilst in good company, Schenck’s self-awareness comes through the sardonic humor of his captions and his absurdist (yet lyrical) juxtapositions in the compositions. Spunky heroines, desert vistas, and dusty cowboys are elevated by the recognition of ingrained notions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In a graphic, comic book style, Schenck uses speech bubbles and dialogues to converse with his viewers. Satirically examining the tropes, stereotypes, and machismo associated with the Old West, his comical and exaggerated text coyly undermine Western clichés, unexpectedly turning them on their head.

In Gratuitous Violence, a dialogue bubble interrupts the action of two cowboys as one exclaims ‘I just don’t want to be involved in gratuitous violence, Cliff!” Another, Empty Promises touches on the trope of the hero leaving his damsel for yet another adventure. The juxtaposition between word and image in each case is both profoundly funny, and devastatingly realist.

“If you look at every caption painting I have done since the mid 1980s. Every single one takes on some aspect of every western cliché there is, and undermines it and turns it on its head,” Schenck explains.

Greg Miller, Billy Schenck, and Thin Lizzy also capture a mirror of the real world through merging collective memory with pop culture. Regardless of if the subject matter is cowboys, famous works of art, or rock lyrics about painting the town red, artistic aptitude and good humor proves to be a winning combination.