"Poe Seascape" Painting

Artist: Steve Wakefield
Medium: Mixed media on canvas (acrylic, silkscreen)
Dimensions: 12" x 23"

Description:
In Poe Seascape, artist Steve Wakefield playfully reclaims a discarded or mundane seascape painting by overlaying it with bold silkscreen prints of Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic face. Set against a kitschy, traditional background of rocks, sea, and sky, the ghostly blue images of Poe interrupt the scene with jarring, surreal intensity. The juxtaposition of lowbrow source material and high-concept screen printing injects humor, mystery, and cultural critique into the work. Wakefield describes the concept as a way to "take a very bad painting and make it more interesting"—a provocative gesture that challenges our ideas of artistic value, authorship, and the transformation of the ordinary into the uncanny.