The Pop Art Peace Love & Music Pony By Howie Green
“For the last several years I have been revisiting the retro style of art that is reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s. I did a LOT of this style art when I was in art school. Suddenly its back in style and once again fashionable in a goofy, retro hippy-dippy way – which, being an old hippie, is fine with me.
I had not painted in this style for quite a while until a Fortune 500 client of mine saw one of my old pieces. She thought it had the perfect look and feel for a marketing campaign they were starting that was aimed at aging Baby Boomers. I was put in charge of the design for the campaign and one thing led to another. A year later we had produced everything from posters and a trade show booth to coasters, embroidered shirts and every type of printed piece you could think of. The huge success of the materials I produced made it pretty clear to me that I had struck a nerve with my fellow Boomers and I was quickly inundated with requests for me to paint various items in my new/old style. I even designed an animated TV commercial in the style for Virgin EuroRailways.
What’s interesting to me about this style of art is how versatile it is for covering surfaces of all kinds of objects and I keep adding to my list. So far I have painted a dozen or so murals, cows, a bench, several public utility boxes, guitars, furniture, a school bus, numerous pieces of furniture, skateboards, the front entrance to Boston City Hall, several large containers for the Massachusetts Dept. of Conservation and Recreation and of course, ponies. Lots of ponies. I painted my first Trail of the Painted Ponies figurine for a private commission and I started getting commissions from all over the globe including Belgium, Australia and other places I have never had the pleasure to visit.
So here is my first official Painted Pony figure and I am very proud to have joined such a great group of artists. In among the swirling shapes and colors I used the dove, musical notes, peace sign and heart icons in the pony design. These icons are all positive symbols and they make me think back to my rainbow colored past when it really did seem like something as simple as peace, love and music could change the world. And maybe after all it did change the world – just a little.”
To view Howie’s Painted Pony, “Peace, Love & Music,” Click Here
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