"I am a Cliché"

Poly Styrene/X-Ray Specs
16" x 10", oil on canvas, 2014

Among painters it is a cliche that you paint in similar colors as the clothing you wear. To keep up with the cliche I even went so far as to paint exactly what I wear, I am the cliche! It's been too long since the X-Ray Specs were in the top 100, and I haven't painted their singer Polly Styrene in six or seven years. When I painted her again, just today, I decided to use the image from the Oh Bondage Up Yours!/I am a Cliché 45 sleeve. Exactly the sleeve that is reproduced for the t-shirt I'm wearing in the photo below. You can't really read what it says but it is—in yellow "X-Ray Specs", in green "Oh Bondage Up Yours!", and in red "I am a Cliché." Now the top 100 contains neither Oh Bondage nor I am a Cliché but yet another hit of the punk band The Day the World Turned Day-Glo. The X-Ray Specs is truly a family affair as Emil gave me the t-shirt while I provided Maria with a picture disc version of Germ Free Adolescents on which The Day the World Turned Day-Glo appears. The Day the World Turned Day-Glo is also a single for the band.