DREAM MATCH SERIES: AJ Styles vs Ricky Steamboat
Ink and watercolor on 18″ x 24″ watercolor paper
Here it is, the debut of the Dream Match Series! I want to give people something they haven’t seen and won’t ever see. Yes, video games can do this and have been for a while, but there’s something about the human imagination that can’t be beat. I think that’s why reading is a more fulfilling experience than watching a movie: It’s at the reader’s pace and they’re the ones filling in what things look like, how they move, how they sound, using their imaginations to create an immersive experience.
Paintings do the same thing. Let your imagination go wild on this confrontation between AJ Styles and Ricky Steamboat and fill in the blanks. Feel the heat from Steamboat’s fireball. Anticipate AJ landing the phenomenal forearm on Ricky. What led to this fight? Is The Dragon shooting the fire at Styles, or is AJ attacking during Steamboat’s entrance? Who’s calling the match? Who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy? WHO WINS?!?
It’s fun, right? With a game, you get to be in the moment and be at the controls, but a lot of these other parts of your imagination are swept aside as you go linearly through the game. With a painting, you can take your time and let your imagination give you the experience.
If you look at the vast majority of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, the violence happened off-camera, most famously with the shower scene in Psycho. Hitch said he did this consciously because nothing he could show the viewer on-screen could match the horrors that their imaginations were capable of.
That’s my mission with the Dream Match Series: To give you fodder for your imagination, to let YOU create with me, to let YOU fill in the blanks and create your own experience. These paintings are the diving board and you’re the diver. Now go do an armstand reverse with two somersaults in the tuck position!