Despite the unashamedly kitsch subject matter, this painting differs from many of my early photo-realist efforts in technique. Although still concerned primarily with the reproduction by hand of cheap throw-away photographic reproduction, the burned highlights, and shallow depth of field, this painting was constructed in a more traditional academic manner in which the subject matter of the photograph is considered rather than just the abstract reproduction of colour forms.

Not only through pop art and 19th century trompe l’oeil, photo-realism also has its roots in the works of Salvador Dali, the enfant terrible of the Surrealist movement and modernism’s most anti-modern protagonist. Though it may seem strange to mention the conquistador of the irrational in conjunction with this hyper-crass piece of post-modern neo-Victoriana. Dali was producing, “Instantaneous and hand-done colour photography of the superfine, extravagant, extra-plastic, extra pictorial, unexplored, super-pictorial, super-plastic, deceptive, hyper-normal and sickly images...” back in the 1930’s, and the influence of his paintings ‘outside any aesthetic or moral pre-occupation’ cannot be overlooked, even here.