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I Painted Andy Warhol

Painting by Sara Holt

 Text by Luigi Fairbanks

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As you can clearly see, this is a portrait of Andy Warhol, painted by Ms. Sara Holt using the following painterly materials: finger paint, gouache, and oil paint.

Actually, “clearly” isn’t the right word in these circumstances, as I had no idea who Andy Warhol was until I typed his name into a search engine. The Defenestration heads said that I should write a little biography about Andy Warhol to accompany Ms. Holt’s painting, but I haven’t really had the time.

According to Ms. Holt, “Andy was the biggest art icon of the 20th Century. I painted this hoping to show both his larger than life personality and also, the vulnerability of the man himself. I named it I Painted Andy Warhol as a little play on the movie title, I Shot Andy Warhol.” Armed with this information and very little else, I created biography below. I had to make stuff up wherever I found holes in his life story.

Andy Warhol was born sometime in the 20^th century to parents who had no idea he’d grow up to have one of the greatest heads of hair the world had ever seen. He grew to an age somewhere in the double digits, and painted pictures of things like soup, which he ate every day to remind him of his adventures on a Mississippi steamboat. After painting enough pictures to fill fifteen very large rooms and the basement of a disreputable New York nightclub, Mr. Warhol retired the art scene to roam the steppes of northern Asia, fighting demons and teaching the locals the mystic path of enlightenment known as Warholism. Later in life, he returned home only to discover that someone had shot him, and that it really hurt. Nursing his gunshot wound, he decided to go into hiding, revealing himself only at posh banquets or the occasional supermarket run. Andy Warhol enjoyed Kung-Fu movies, buttered popcorn, and the banter of ravens and madmen.

I like it, anyway.

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Sara Holt paints worlds, times, and places she'd rather be experiencing. When she's not painting the faces of her famous friends, she's scraping together money for Chinese food and wondering with all the hullabaloo over the “hot new painter,” why she's still sooooooooo broke. Other than that, she spends her time being the superhero of her own life, cuz that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, she likes it, baby!!!