Photos by Peter Hinsdale (IG: @chippercentral)
This was my biggest street piece to date and took three days to finish. It's in the alley behind Atlas Brewing and the Mini Cooper dealership at Lincoln and Diversey. All the people at Atlas Brewing were really great. The building owner brought me cookies his wife made for me and invited me to dinner the first night... very generous and thoughtful people.
Peter Hinsdale came out to photograph the process and in addition to taking some great photos was an unbelievable help... giving me a hand to tape off the walls, pulling up his car to shine his headlights when it got too dark to see.
I've been asked many times who the female character is in the piece. The image references an Ernie Chan '76 Detective Comics cover. The woman is not a regular Batman villain, rather only in one issue. She was hired by a rival company to kill Bruce Wayne, not even knowing he was Batman. They went on a date and she kissed him with poison lipstick at the end of the evening before he suited up. When he realized something was wrong he found her and got the antidote before it was too late.
The background to the comic has nothing to do with why I painted it however. Women are and have always been alluring and intriguing to me. The electricity between the characters and the power dynamics of the relationship really drew me to it.
It's also important to me that I put a realistic light source on the scene and make it feel believable in the space. These characters are from a myth, but the challenges they face are real and universal. I want everyone to be able to see themselves as a character in the story.
