Created in 2022

Blue Moon is an oil painting by visual artist Derek Olinger. A work of magic realism, this four-foot square image is deeply routed in myth and symbolism. The ideas are drawn from film, movie posters, television, literature, music, album covers, art history, pop culture, and Hollywood.

Present in the work is a reemerging concept of combining a look-alike Hollywood Starlet (Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield) with a look-alike Hollywood Monster. Olinger found this concept to fit a narrative for the painting First Snow. The idea first occurred while watching the film The Seven Year Itch (1955), where Marilyn Monroe's character expresses genuine sympathy for The Creature From The Black Lagoon. This concept is carried on further in Blue Moon, with a new pairing of famous impersonators very similar to the characters in the film Mister Lonely (2007) directed and co-written by avant-garde artist and filmmaker Harmony Korine. Other reoccurring subject matter in Blue Moon include featuring a Southern California Mountain Peak (with fresh snow), partially emerged figures in a pool of water, the beach ball, tile, indoor-outdoor perspective, windows, and the moon.