Chris Mars 2

Chris Mars the painter is also Chris Mars the Musician (formerly of The Replacements), as I was informed in a comment to my previous post (July 23, 2009). Both are still hard at work. The painter has a couple solo shows coming up including one in Wisconsin that opens this Friday, the 22nd at the Phipps Center for the Arts (wait... that's tomorrow).

His paintings are powerfully dark subconscious rants at the world about labels and identity, the truth about ourselves and what it means to be different. People in our culture like to think of themselves as different, as oddballs and individualists, but in reality our conformity brutally dismisses those who truly are. Chris watched his older brother go in and out of horrific mental institutions, abased and humiliated in a process more concerned with statistical outcomes than actual people. So he has an idea what it means to be be labeled different. Chris Mars paints monsters because they represent the other, and that's where his sympathies lie. The real monsters may be us.
See more at chrismarspublishing.com




































"Something Empty"























"Anxiety the Clown"























"Auto-Intervention"