The Alchemist
there and stayed for about a year A self-portrait and got to see so many artists come called The through there. I got a crash course in modern art, from Jasper Johns to Alchemist is Willem de Kooning and Piet Moneight feet by drian, the godfather of modern art. found-art, I love the idea that four feet acrylic With something worn down by nature is spray paint on picked up and given life again.” Hunkered down in his man-cave Plexiglas. “It’s a studio in downtown Sisters, under a protective canopy of ponderosa pine football player, trees, warmed by a crackling woodthe costume stove fire and an enthusiastic coalis there but it’s black Lab puppy named Juniper, Marinovich has created a comfortnot what he able fortress of solitude to spur his imagination. truly is. There’s unbounded “I’m addicted to color so I’m just finishing up one of my Plexiglas a radiant life I’ve been commissioned to do,” force burning pieces he said. “It’s a technique I did for the 2011 ESPN documentary on my life inside and in preparation for a gallery showing. that’s where the A self-portrait called The Alchemist. Eight feet by four feet acrylic spray magic lives.” paint on Plexiglas. It’s a football
player, the costume is there but it’s not what he truly is. There’s a radiant life force burning inside and that’s where the magic lives.” Marinovich’s current project is a hypnotic 120-foot long by 17-foot tall mural of a dreamy sunset emblazoned across the outside of Rene Schwab’s indoor equestrian arena. 120 cans of spray paint were depleted in its creation. “She calls her ranch the “cowgirl hide-out” and pink is her color so I said how about an electric pink Central Oregon sunset? And she said bitchin’, when can you start? That was fun because I’ve always wanted to go big and spray paint was a medium I’d been messing with these past few years.” The rebel once branded Robo-QB sits back, taking a quick drag on his cigarette. A pair of guitars hangs on the wall beside an eclectic collection of art books and football history volumes. Vivid portraits of former NFL quarterbacks, Bernie Kosar and Terry Bradshaw stare him down. Skateboards and an autographed Sonic Youth poster share space with a tough framed picture of his father, Marv, from USC’s 1962 national championship team. The paintings and limited-edition prints have a bold, naked sensibility to them, whether portraits of aging athletes, musical icons or multimedia landscapes, each piece is injected with a rare rawness and synthesis of stark, infectious color. Carrying on his thematic works of heroic gladiators on the turf battlefields, Marinovich captures the stoic leadership of an aging George Blanda in a particularly striking piece. Blanda, who retired from the NFL in 1976 at the ripe age of 48, is depicted in the same silver and black pencil work stitched into his faded Raiders uniform, drawn with a slightly cartoonish slant, his deep facial lines worn proudly like a bruised badge of honor, weary of a life dedicated to football, perhaps commenting on the artificiality of sports heroes and their grass-stained costumes. Surging into the new year, Marinovich has his mind’s eye focused on sculpture. “Right now my sculpture is all I can think about,” he admits with a grin. “My dad had been sculpting redwood for years and we once collaborated on a nine-foot piece of African mahogany and that was my introduction to sculpture. Now I’ve done a handful of both metal sculptures and wood sculptures and I want to try applying multimedia techniques by combining wood, rock, glass and water. That’s what art is to me. It’s the mystical and the indescribable.” www.toddmarinovich.com, 949-945-8447.
Cover Article
Elvis Costello
David Bowie
George Blanda
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