Octocopter Painting Mechanism #1

DiBenedetto is a painter and draftsman who creates visually complex, hallucinatory landscapes that evoke the fantastic imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, and Max Ernst, and the psychedelic poster designs of Rick Griffin. This sheet brings together several of DiBenedetto's primary motifs, such as the octopus, the helicopter, and the spokes of a ferris wheel. Several of the helicopter blades, undergirded by sinuous tentacles, terminate in painted canvases. The artist has said that he made this and several related drawings in response to a suggestion from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, that he fabricate a helicopter/octopus mechanism that would dispense pigment on eight canvases; the mechanism was never built.