What is upcycled vintage art?

 

Upcycled vintage art is taking unwanted art and giving it a second life. I like to paint elements of pop-culture into the art to give a modern relevance to out-of-vogue art styles. 

What is altered art? 
This is a new trend, and I've had fun meeting a few others who do the same as me... it's basically taking an existing work of art and altering it to tell a new story. My niche of altered art is that I like to alter the pieces subtly, as if the original artist had painted those elements in there themselves... I see it as a collaboration between myself and the artist, like fine-art-graffiti.

Why paint elements of pop-culture into vintage art?
Throughout history artists have documented their culture, events, and history through their paintings. In our slice of time, much of our shared popular culture exist in a fictional and digital world (tv, movies, video games.) As an artist, I want to capture my experiences by creating a tangible works of art that give those elements of our popular culture a place in art history.

By physically painting elements from popular culture into vintage paintings, I am creating a tangible historical fiction in the art. A lot of the elements I paint do not exist in the real world... so by painting them into a physical work of art, it bridges that gap between the virtual world and the real world. As they say, seeing is believing... and being able to see an old painting with those fictional elements of our pop culture in them, allows us to imagine that they actually existed and were captured by the artist long ago.