Instead of drinking pitchers of beer, artist Karen Eland makes pictures out of beer. The 38-year-old painter has turned beer into portraits of everyone from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga to President Obama. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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“It’s a passion of mine to experiment with all sorts of foods and drinks as a painting medium,” said Eland, of Bend, Ore., who is also known for her coffee paintings.
Eland uses about a pint of brew per painting, layering the suds on canvas as if they were watercolors.
“It’s a little harder than watercolor paintings because the beer is stickier than paint, and also comes off easily if you spill water,” said Eland, adding that she prefers using lager to paint.
She recently displayed her beer-tinged collection at the San Diego Beer Fair, and has fetched as much as $15,500 for one of her pieces.
She said the paintings take several days to finish, depending on the amount of detail she painstakingly includes.
Her art is anything but stale, and sometimes her medium creeps into her masterpieces.
She painted Obama, known to enjoy a cold one from time to time, behind a bar, and soccer star David Beckham holding a bottle of brew.
The only problem is she doesn’t always have enough beer to toast the completion of a work.
“Usually I taste a little of the brew before starting to paint, so there isn’t always much left,” Eland said.
Eland (below) said she caught the art bug when she was young and decided at age 14 to become an artist.
It wasn’t until she was working as a barista at a Tulsa, Okla., espresso shop that she started using coffee to paint.
Possibly due to the caffeine, Eland’s coffee paintings have been far more elaborate than her beer works. With coffee, she has made astonishing replications of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” holding a cup of joe.
