As usual, follow my NSFW warning with the proper trepidation; most of the time my links won’t get you fired but they will earn you plenty of sideways looks.

Being a good and trusting friend of all things kitschy but smart, I can’t help but be a sucker for the juicy pop culture reimaginings of Isabel Samaras.

Based out of San Francisco, the Parsons-educated painter draws as much from the work of the art masters like Botticelli as she does from TV producers of the 60’s and 70’s, like Sherwood Schwartz of Gilligan’s Island. Her genius is juxtaposing our most familiar faces into timeless scenarios, and twisting both the characters and the original paintings until their stock cache bleeds out and is irrevocably replaced by something altogether new, and usually erotic.

Unlike so many tortured artists, Samaras keeps things light in both her life as well as her work, which is steeped in campy, even raunchy humor, while remaining inherently feminist in theory; few women are ever represented as passive or victimized. Quite the opposite, as we see from the example above, but the execution (pun intended) is always upbeat. As she was quoted in 2003’s Vicious, Delicious & Ambitious: 20th Century Women Artists by Sherri Cullison (pub. Shiffer Design Books),

I really rally against the Van Gogh myth of the miserable artist, partly because so many people buy into that and think they have to be miserable to create. I find that a very dangerous mental place, and I don’t think that anyone should take themselves there…It’s a very romantic notion that we’re all starving and tortured. In my work there is one commonality – the joy of getting together. I want to depict the joys of life and to be happy and successful. It’s a short life. Enjoy yourself.

Samaras made a pretty big splash about ten years ago with her coloring book for grownups, Devil Babe’s Big Book of Fun but she’s become a bit less heard of in recent years, despite a long string of gallery showings internationally. Here’s hoping she’s been in a cocoon, cooking up a new show.

Artist’s Page [Astrocat.com]