FOUNTAIN HILLS - How do you like your
eggs? Technicolor? Yin-Yang shaped? Green eggs no ham? A
stars-and-stripes pattern?
Not for breakfast - for your walls. Cave Creek artist
Chris Palin has turned a mélange of fried eggs into
high-end art.
On Thursday at Vu, the storied wine bar in Fountain
Hills, Palin will display his work against a dreamy
backdrop of winking city lights and cinnamon-colored
mountains. Folksinger Bill Cioffi will provide live
entertainment.
From the ordinary (giant slices of kiwi)
to the obscure (the structure of a neuron), Palin's
textured acrylics explode with color (view the gallery
at www.chrispalin.com).
"I like to keep it fun and light-hearted," the
39-year-old said, dressed in a crisp, pearl-snap shirt
with oat-colored hair matted into ropes of dreadlocks.
His house, tidy and spare, pulses with character from
stacks of unframed paintings that lean against the
walls, their colors so powerful they could seemingly
light a dark room.
The most prominent painting is Palin's 2006 acrylic,
"Breakfast in America," depicting Old Glory entirely
from red, white and blue sunny-side-up eggs.
When asked to explain how the whole egg thing came
about, Palin pulls out a plastic Fischer Price egg, the
kind that comes with children's toy sets. "From playing
kitchen," he smiles. A stay-at-home dad, he takes
inspiration from his charges.
Two little girls wearing Disney Princess costumes run
through the house. Ava, dressed in a ruffled ball gown,
is 5. Clare, tumbling around in a sequined mermaid
skirt, is 2. "I spend a lot of time with my kids, and
they influence my work," Palin said.
Their impact is, indeed, captured on the canvases.
"Green Eggs No Ham," an Andy Warhol-esque vision of the
kid-celebrated Dr. Seuss book, consists entirely of two
giant eggs with green yolks. Sun-scorched crayons are
the subject of "Melt Down."
|
"I had no idea what
I was doing |
But Palin didn't start out painting on the banks of the
Seine while sipping wine from a green bottle. An
investment banker, he traded stocks during the heady
days of the dot-com era when Internet
start-up companies
bloated the market. Then in 2000, the bubble burst.
"I cared too much," he said. "It was too hard for me to
call people and tell them we lost money. That pushed me
out of it."
When Ava was born, he chose to stay home while his wife,
DeeAnn, went back to work. Needing an outlet, Palin
purchased paints from the craft store, Hobby Lobby.
"I had no idea what I was doing when I started. But I
think the greatest ideas come out of being naïve."
Or being able to extract magic from the minutia of life,
a talent ostensibly contained in one's DNA.
Today, Palin's work is carried in galleries across the
U.S., from Key West, Fla., to Los Angeles, commanding up
to $45,000 for an original.
But it's not all glamour. There's still a prosaic nature
to his day.
"Just this morning, I told my wife I was going to mix it
up little bit," he deadpanned. "I made the coffee before
I got the kids their milk. Usually it's the other way
around."
Michelle Hoffman can be reached at michelle.hoffman@cox.net.
Chris Palin Art Show
• When: 7 p.m. Thursday.
• Where: Vu, 14815 E. Shea Boulevard, Fountain Hills.
• Information: (480) 816-5690.