Engine Dreaming Vermillion – Chris Vega | Fine Art Print

Four in the afternoon, the light in the kitchen goes warm, and the loudest thing in the room is a cat who could not care less.

He is asleep on a hot rod engine. Chrome, headers, a block that has clearly been run hard – and on top of it, curled up like it is a radiator in winter, a pink cat. Behind him the wall goes sunset orange into turquoise into hot pink, sprayed fast, drips left where they landed.

Look at the tail

It comes up and over and lies across his own sleeping face. Nobody put it there. He did that. That is the whole joke, and it is why you smile twice – once at the cat on the engine, then again when you notice the tail.

Then read the door. MECANICO, hand-brushed straight onto the car door, tilting with the panel, spray bleeding under the edge of the letters where the stencil was cut in a hurry. Chris leaves that bleed in on purpose. “I learned to make things fast because you do not get long on a wall.” One fat black line for the cat, colour sprayed behind it, one phrase lettered, done. The critic Charlotte put it plainly: “A pink cat atop an engine with vibrant colors is catnip for collectors.”

Getting it up there

Canvas with a visible weave, so the drips and the spray have something to sit in instead of looking flat. It comes stretched over solid wood, an inch and a quarter deep, with the image running round the sides – so it hangs straight out of the box. One nail, two minutes, no framer, no glass, no bill you did not plan for. Matte, so a window across the room gives you the cat back and not your own lamp.

Most people take the 18 x 24 in (46 x 61 cm) at $149 – that is the size already selected, and it holds a kitchen or a bar wall above a bench or a fridge. Smaller 12 x 16 is $129, the big 24 x 32 is $229. High quality print of a digital painting, made to order in up to ten business days, free shipping in the continental US, and the price on the work is the price.

One honest thing

It is loud and it has an opinion. In a polished, everything-matches room it will pick a fight. In a garage, a game room, a kitchen with some grit in it, it is the first thing anyone asks about.

Take it home if that is your wall. If you want to sit with it, go look at the rest of Chris Vega’s work – or follow him and you will see the next one before it goes anywhere.