"...save me from this darkness..." *

the world does not need another Johnny Cash portriat, and sometimes, perhaps in the case of film and fans in recent years, it would be a more fitting tribute to not pay homage at all. Cash, like many of the great songwriters, left music that will speak for itself and last the test of time; in a way that artists (and certainly, sadly, illustrators) rarely ever come close to achieving.

but i have always been a huge fan. both prison recordings, though very different, earn the adjective of 'landmark'. if there was a personality test where you had to pick a set of cards with the faces of music icons (lennon, presley, hendrix, dylan, etc), Cash would probably be one i would instinctualy grab.

this is the first in a series of portraits i am doing about musicians/icons in an attempt to just do more portraits, and also to do a little more editorial work. it was important for me to do things with more to say than your average big head-small body caricature.

fellow Highwayman Kris Kristofferson once said in an interview (that i can not find on-line, it was in Filter or something around the time Blade 2 came out) how relationships and creativity rarely successfully coexist. That you are always sacrificing one for the other. if you're lucky though, maybe you find that one in a million...
so this piece is, in truth, a tribute to June Carter

thanks for looking
-peter

* subject quote from 'I See a Darkness', actually written by Will Oldham, but what a duet they made of it