Mike Myers Has Been Painting Colonel Sanders…for Three Years
The actor has been absent from the big screen lately, but that doesn’t mean he hasn't been working. He’s just found a new interest—painting art history-inspired portraits of KFC’s founder.
Phil Noble/Reuters
Where the hell has Mike Myers been?
You know, the guy behind blockbuster comedy films Wayne’s World and Austin Powers. It’s been six years since we’ve seen his face on the big screen. And even then, The Love Guru was kind of an epic fail.
As it turns out, the Canadian-born comedian may have been taking a bit of an artistic break in order to get his mojo back. According to an article in the August issue of GQ magazine, Myers has spent the past three years honing his talent for Colonel Sanders portraits, re-imagining various versions of art history masterpieces with the addition of the KFC founder.
“On the day that [British painter] Lucian Freud died,” he told the magazine, “I painted my version of a Freud with the Colonel, naked, holding a palette, painting himself. Then I did the Colonel with the Pearl Earring. Then I did the Colonel Lisa. You know, which is the Mona Lisa with the Colonel.”
Genius, right?
Myers was urged to painting by friend Damian Loeb, who is known for his hyperrealist works, and began painting his wife, Kelly, and dog, George Harrison. Soon enough, Myers had a studio in Soho and began to reach deep into his consciousness (as most artists do), rediscovering childhood memories of the iconic king of fried chicken.
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“Growing up in Canada, looking south at America, they are so amazing at creating identity that they even have enough leftover to come up with the colonel who is the colonel of chicken,” he exclaimed to GQ. “As a kid I literally said the words, ‘Why are they militarizing chicken?’ Because I didn’t understand the Kentucky Colonel of it all. Our whole family was obsessed with the Colonel. For me show business was buying Kentucky Fried Chicken. Because it was nationally advertised, and it seemed exotic.”
We’re hoping at least one of these portraits makes a cameo in Austin Powers 4.
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