A co-owner of the Old Town Ale House in Chicago's North Side, Bruce Elliott, painted a portrait of a nude Sarah Palin for his ale house, using his daughter as the model. The portrait was unveiled Thursday and has started drawing crowds and buzz.
The portrait is done as an oil painting, stands four-foot-tall and represents a nude Sarah Palin, with her trademark glasses, red stiletto heels and nothing else, leaning on a gun and standing on a polar bear skin.
An uncensored version of the painting with other nude portraits beside it can be found at Flickr, showing this type of art is not unusual for the Old Town Ale House.
Elliott says the idea came to him the week before when he noticed his daughter Grace doing an impression of Palin, saying "My daughter is a heck of a stand-in for Sarah Palin. She can even do the voice."
From there it was a simple matter of getting his daughter to pose nude for him, which she says wasn't a problem because "He changed my diapers,"
Elliott, who says he’s pulling for Barack Obama in the election, worked on the portrait for seven to eight hours a day for a week. While the piece qualifies as a quick grab for attention, it’s also very much the creation of someone immersed in the coverage of Palin, whom he refers to as “a real nasty piece of work” while also admitting feeling attracted to her.
The report from Windy Citizen says the Palin portrait is becoming the bars "star attraction" with people coming in, even from rival bars to see it and take photographs of it.
Elliott states he will not sell the portrait and neither will he paint another version of it, the he says this of Palin, "I don’t see how she could be offended by this. I made her into a sex figure."
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