Shag - The Sinner's Cookbook
Josh
Agle, (AKA Shag -- take the last two letters of his first name, add them
to the first two of his last name) is an illustrator and painter with an
admiration for the clean, tight graphic style of '50s and '60s commercial
art and illustration. Agle has signed his commercial art "Shag"
since 1988, long pre-dating the current cultural infatuation with
groovy-go-go-Brit-slang. Shag's illustrations have appeared in mainstream
media like Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Forbes, as well as many
other publications.
"It
was only in 1995 that I sat down to paint something which might be hung in
a gallery," Shag says. "Everything before that was meant to be
reproduced commercially, but enough people started asking for originals
that I decided I'd better paint something 'real'." Because his
previous work was often reproduced up to several million times, Shag
wanted the gallery work to be one-of-a-kind, and would not make prints or
reproductions of the paintings. That attitude changed in 1999, after
enough people had asked him to make prints available. Several lithos, and
serigraphs have been released through various galleries and fine-art
publishers since then, and more are in production.
The
paintings themselves have proved immensely popular, surprising even Shag.
"I just wanted to make pretty pictures -- something I'd like to look
at and own," he explains. Nevertheless, the paintings have struck
some sort of chord with the public. Every one of Shag's solo shows have
been complete sell-outs, including a recent showing of 25 paintings at the
Outré Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. "I wasn't sure if the imagery
-- the night-club scenes and cheesy jet-setters, the tropical bars and
swingers -- would translate outside of the U.S. But it went over really
well, and the Australians seemed to relate to what I was doing."
Shag
lives with his wife and daughter in their Southern California hideout, a
tiki bar/supervillain's-lair. When not painting, Shag spends his time
collecting "lots of old stuff," and working on his 1964 Ford
Thunderbird.
