You wouldn’t think Marilyn Monroe, Fred Sanford, and Donald Trump have anything in common. But local artist Curtis Sneary has rendered satirical pop art versions of the movie siren, grouchy TV dad, and fiery businessman. Iconic images are his playing field, and when you see them you can’t stop looking.
In Swah-rey on Central Avenue in St. Pete, Sanford stands beside his tattered sofa clutching his heart: ‘This is the big one Elizabeth!”
In Pom Pom’s Teahouse & Sandwicheria a print of a modern day Monroe famously poised on the subway grate takes a selfie on her iPhone.
And propped up on Sneary’s easel is his latest project — Trump as the Tin Man, skipping down the yellow brick road, which now resembles bars of gold, arm in arm with a Hillary-faced Dorothy.
“Her nose was too short; I just lengthened it,” Sneary says. “It can be off by an eighth of an inch between the nose and the mouth, and that can make the biggest difference.”
He lives on a quiet, sunny, brick-paved Kenwood street, and his studio sits tucked in the back of the pea-green house he shares with his wife and son. This is where he’s putting the finishing touches on the Trump and Clinton piece as music plays in the background.
“Trump is the Tin Man and he’s trying to find a heart,” his wife, Beth, says, “and Hilary’s trying to go home, to the White House.”
A friend heard on the radio that Clinton’s favorite movie is the Wizard of Oz and asked if Sneary knew that before he started the painting.
“I didn’t,” he said. “It was weird. I was kind of channeling.”
Sneary produces newspaper clippings, cartoon illustrations, magazine photos and articles, all used as references for the painting.
“I took a photo of Beth and I for the bodies,” he says, holding a picture of them standing in a driveway, posed the same way as the figures in the painting.
He first makes acrylic sketches, to get a feel for it, before he paints over the sketch in oil.
“But I start with sketching,” Sneary says.”The ideas just come from filtering what’s around me.”
To say that pop culture, television and movies are a big influence on his work only scratches the surface.
Sneary’s parents divorced when he was young and Beth says he was essentially raised by the television. A lot of his paintings have to do with emotional childhood associations, with an adult twist.
“Some of these are characters that come to you when you’re home by yourself as a kid,” Beth says. “And the scenes are scenes that he has a connection to.”
A painting of an angry, open-mouthed Jack Nicholson screaming at the nurse to put the TV on captures the famous scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“I have actors I like,” Sneary says. “And I like climatic moments in movies.”
He re-imagines familiar images in a new context to communicate with people, and Beth says most of his work is a commentary on something.
“Because people have these things in common,” Beth says, “Most of us know (the Wizard of Oz.)”
Childhood toys are also subject to interpretation in Curtis’s world.
A striking, bold-colored rendition of the boardgame “Operation” is being fed into an MRI machine in a piece called “MRI before Operation.”
“I had an MRI. It freaked me out,” Sneary said. “A lot of (my art) is anxiety-based, and life experiences. And I loved that game.”
Sneary discovered painting as a senior in high school. His art teacher picked up on his talent right away, and offered him a scholarship.
“His parents had basically not saved any money for him to go to college, no plans for him at all,” Beth says. “(There was no) encouragement with his art. That this one teacher recognized it was a miracle. It was a miracle that he went to college and got the scholarship when there were no plans for him at all. This one person really made a difference in his life.”
Married for 16 years, with a son who just turned 14, Sneary and his wife have lived in St. Pete for 14 years now. They are a team in his artwork, with Beth handling business issues and modeling for many pieces, (her body became Marilyn Monroe’s in that painting) and their goal is to make their whole house into a studio in the near future.
“It used to be artists were just trying to get in to a gallery, and galleries are great,” Beth says. “And they have clientele that maybe they can sell that work to. But there’s guerrilla marketing to get art out to people. It’s changing with the murals popping up all over town. It’s just as valuable as staying in galleries.”
Sneary teaches private students and some classes around town, and his work is available on his two websites: stpeteartist.com, dedicated to his landscapes and area landmarks, and csneary.com, the home of the satirical pop art.
In a piece like Monroe or Trump, Sneary says the answer to the question ‘How long does it take to finish?’ is a lifetime.
“Because you put all this knowledge into it,” he says, adding that the physical work averages about 40 hours, or a month to six weeks.
Sneary has shown the landscapes in galleries and sold well but his satirical pop art has been slower to sell, despite its popularity with audiences.
“It’s not over-the-couch kind of work,” he says.
However, the prints do sell, and recently a fan told him if she could afford to, she would decorate her entire house with his work.
Although he does a lot of networking and approaching establishments to get his work seen, “it’s gotta feel right. If I don’t like the place, I won’t do it,” he says.
“The thing about this work is that it’s not just appealing to the people with money. People in any social class in the world who watched the Wizard of Oz can access the work and get an idea of what this person is talking about,” Beth says.
“I paint what I feel. If you’re in it for the money, as the artist, forget it. I read a long time ago most artists don’t really come into focus until my age, late forties, 50,” Sneary says. “So I’m right on schedule.”
You can see many of his pop art oil paintings at Swah-rey at (2105 Central Ave.) through May.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2016.