Send Her A Video Game Thing And She’ll Paint It For You

I do not know where Ali Spagnola gets her energy, but I’ll have what she’s having. We first met the musician/artist/writer/all-around-dynamo upon learning of her “power hour” drinking game/album, which came with 60 one-minute tunes, each of which must be accompanied by a shot of beer en route to drunktown.

Amid the drinking and the concerts, Spagnola has also translated her skill for small bits of inspiration into painting. For the past six years, she’s been taking emails from anyone with requests for paintings, which she would then paint and mail to them for free. She calls the project “Free Paintings“. Naturally.

She’s just passed her 2000th painting (!) and each one has a wildly different subject. Several of the paintings, she was sure to point out in her email to me, are of the video game-persuasion.

She explains the project here:

Spagnola’s also put together one mondo image of all 2000 paintings, which you can view here. (Fair warning, it’s 10MB.)

If you want a free painting, you can ask for one at her site, and you can also donate, which will help keep the project going. She cautions that the waiting list is in the thousands, so if you request now, you might be waiting a while. But, hey, for a personalised painting of Cate Archer’s lockpicking barrette? It’s worth it.