Cat Power (again)

Cat Power
20" x 16", oil on canvas, 2015

In the top 100 of 2014 Cat Power was the highest ranked musician, again. Her song American Flag, from Moon Pix of 1998, was in 2000 the first of her songs to feature in the annual lists of 100 that she dominated since. 2000 was also the year I saw the first (of four) Cat Power concerts. The 2014 edition contains five of her songs, this then is the fifth painting of her in a year's time (it's actually a do-over illustrating the 2012 song Real Life that had been represented by a photographic image appropriation using one of the surrealists' techniques. The source for the painting above is a photo of a youthful Cat Power taken somewhere in the mid nineties). I have lost count but the total Cat Power portraits I painted since 2000 must be nearing fifty! (I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed of this feat.) Anyway, the Top 100 2015 has started and no sign of Cat Power dominance thus far. No, tomorrow will be a flashback to the very early years (mid eighties) of the top 100 when Laurie Anderson had a string of songs in the list. I will bring my Big Science record along that I will ask her to sign. Tomorrow she will present a lecture discussing her work in the ArtSPEAK series hosted by the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Fort Myers.