Robert Xavier Burden used to paint nudes, but nearly a decade ago he shifted his eye from bare flesh to another sort of fetish. Now he spends thousands of hours creating massive, and massively nerdy, oil paintings of toys from his youth.
You might think his switch from naked human models to tiny action figures would make life a lot simpler for the San Francisco artist, but you’d be wrong.
“I’m hesitant to use the word ‘easy,’ just because of the fact that making these paintings is ludicrous, you know?” Burden told Wired during a recent interview here in his warehouse studio, which is packed with paintings that can reach more than 10 feet tall. “But I also don’t think that they work on a small scale. I think if it is about sort of recapturing a sense of childhood wonderment and awe, there is this idea that maybe these things should tower over you — that if you walk into a gallery, they should be a little bit overwhelming.”
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Remember kids, billboard vandalism is a fun and victimless crime.
(NOTE: We are not saying that vandalizing billboards is funny or great)
