Ed Paschke

I read last night that the artist Ed Paschke died over Thanksgiving. If you’re not familiar with his work, a gallery can be viewed at his website.

His art was bold and unique, and people tend to have a visceral reaction to it—they either loved it or hated it. I fall into the former category, having originally fallen in love with Matinee (below), and later attending a Paschke exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I became enamored with the rest of his work. It’s atypical of the art I tend to appreciate, but for some reason it moved me. At the exhibition, I bought a small reprint of Matinee, which now, almost half my life later, I still hold onto—tucked into a box of mementos from an age where life was nothing but art and books and films and wonder, set to a soundtrack of The Smiths.

This doesn’t really have anything to do with politics. Ed Paschke just happened to be a man whose art fascinated and thrilled me. Thanks for sharing your vision with us, Ed.