Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Painted As The Renaissance Painters They Were Named After
Owen Dippie has been restless lately in Brooklyn, cooling his heels and trying to stay invisible like a ninja while he waits for his big opportunity to slaughter a wall. He’ll need 5 days of good weather but New York is only doing 3 at a time, so he’s slicing between rain drops, sharpening his aerosol blades on this masked quartet by the railroad tracks.
Not quite legendary yet, you can tell that it is well within his future province. Here we see that shinobi Dippie has just scaled these walls with Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello – not the turtles, but the Renaissance painters. A child of the 1980s and 90s in New Zealand, Owen loves the teenage mutants as well, so why not combine the Renaissance with modern cartoon crime fighters?
The only crime he has had to fight so far has been to rise above the stench of Bushwick trash ; a box of chicken carcasses rotting nearby is just one example of stuff that individuals and industry have dumped here. It’s of little consequence to him as he climbs the ladder because Owen is painting in the city of some of his other heroes – Tupac, Biggie, Basquiat, Haring. Today he met another hero – Charlie Ahearn stopped by. Last week he caught the Coney Island art walls that are going up by contemporary urban artists from the last four decades, many of whose work he has long admired.
His own work here is not finished but he’s keeping a tight lid on his plans. An original all his own, he is determined, dedicated, contemplative. This modern renaissance will be continued in a large way before Owen Dippie races from NYC for further adventure on the US west coast. Like a ninja. Keep your eyes open.
Photos by Jaime Rojo
