When I wrote about 2022’s NY Comic Con, I shared a photo from an artist that made a poster representing Pulp Fiction as Keith Haring characters. I similarly have created a series of Haring-inspired paintings, so I thought I’d share.

This is the first Keith Haring inspired portrait I made, in winter 2022. I combined characters from several of his works. The baby on the hip was inspired by his radiant baby.

I don’t remember what prompted me to make this, other than there being an empty space near my front door that I wanted to fill. I thought I’d only make one Haring-inspired painting, but that year at parent-teacher conferences, I saw that my youngest son’s teacher had a bevvy of Haring items on his desk. So, for an end-of-year gift, I created this one:

The intention behind this one was to show how, as a teacher, he lifts children up with the power of learning.

A local Instagram follower of mine saw my original painting in the background on my stories, and commissioned me to paint one for her family of five that same year.

Time passed, 2020 happened. The same room where a blank space called for the first portrait ached for more artwork along the stairs. As 2020 was a time of family bonding (lets call it that, shall we?) the inspiration for the others was activities we enjoy as a family.

Snowboarding is one of our favorite things to do as a group, especially in winter 2021. We had season passes at a local mountain and each weekend we would get a day room and take turns hanging out with our youngest son or “shredding” with our oldest son. Our youngest was 2 1/2, so he’s depicted not-quite matering the sport, while my oldest is by far the best, and he’s shown doing a trick in the foreground.

Another one of our favorite family activities is definitely island hopping, diving, and boating around The Philippines! We make it out there every year, aside from those when we were restricted during covid. When I made this one, I was certainly yearning for those days.

The final one I made for the stairway set was this one of us on the bikes. We were doing a lot of family rides with our bike trailer in quarantine, but I thought the big wheel would be a cuter representation of our youngest son’s shared love for cycling.

In January, a friend reached out and commissioned a similar portrait for her family. They had a great reference photo amongst the pictures shared on their Christmas card. They ended up pregnant with a third child, so I’ll have to sell this to someone else in the future!

These are fun to do, and I love acknowledging how much a minimalistic human form can express. I love for my art to represent people’s relationships with their environments and others, and works like these peel back the layers and show how much can be seen with few lines and a single color.