An old friend. My art show in 2006 featured almost exclusively paintings of this guy. I can’t believe I got a month and a half into this project before he came to visit. I have a great love of Basil Wolverton’s pen & ink artwork (1950s-70s, weird artist for, among other things, Mad Magazine (when it was still a comic book) and “Plop!” magazine. He created Lena the Hyena (created for the Lil’ Abner cartoon strip.) He inspired folks like R. Crumb and much of the underground comics movement of the 1970s seemed to follow in his footsteps. So I’m about 35 years late on this one, and I don’t care. Strangely, I started painting Sneltram for my art show (after “discovering” him during a 2005 artists' retreat with friends in the Virginia mountains), but later, I found an old sketchbook from 1991, when I was traveling in Amsterdam doing juggling shows on the street. There he was. I’d originally been inspired by the Dutch word for “Express Light Rail Train” (Sneltram) and decided that had to be a cartoon character’s name. It only took me 15 years to do something with the idea.
So when I say an old friend, he really has been in my life for a long time.
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