The tendency to mash modern pop culture together with images from a more conservative past—exemplified by “thrift store painting,” the trend of picking up old cheap motel art and then painting stormtroopers or whatever over it—has an element of ironic mockery that often undercuts some of the fun. That’s part of what makes Oliver Wetter’s “Ancient Kaiju Project” so refreshing. Wettel has taken digital images of classic landscape paintings, like Thomas Moran’s “The Juniata, Evening,” and added in giant monsters and other creatures from pop culture, like the kaiju from Pacific Rim. By working only with digital files, and by concentrating on emulating the style and brushwork of the original art, Wetter creates images that manage to be reverent to the original artists, even while they depict Godzilla stomping around their handiwork.
You can see more of “The Ancient Kaiju Project” on Wetter’s blog, Ars Fantasio.