This awesome Stephen King-inspired painting contains 170 references to his books
Can you spot them all?
If you look in the Guinness Book of Records, there’s no record for “Most Pants Caused To Be Shat Globally Across A Career”, but if there was, Stephen King would hold it. He’s written 54 novels, over 200 short stories, the vast majority of them scary.
It, The Stand, The Shining, ‘Salem’s Lot, Carrie, The Dark Tower, Misery… The dude’s terrifying. What’s more, he’s multiplying - he’s got two sons that are both horror authors, so if they in turn have two horror authors, within a mere 34 generations the entire world will be made up of horror writers.
(Weirdly, his sons look nothing like each other but both look like him. His face is exactly the average of the faces of his two sons. Like, if you used morphing software to transform Joe Hill into Owen King, the face exactly halfway through the morph would be Stephen King. Spooky. Like, it’s probably not actually true, but it’s still spooky.) (He has a daughter as well but she isn’t a horror author so it messes up this theory.)
Over the course of selling 350 million copies of his books (that is crazy) (seriously that is crazy), King has obviously amassed a lot of serious fans, and one of them, Jordan Monsell, has paid a hell of a tribute. He’s created this incredible painting, entitled King Country, that features over 170 references to King’s works. Even the most casually acquainted with King’s work will recognise one or two things (look, a terrifying clown! a bucket of pig’s blood!) but 170? It’s the work of a mad genius:
That’s nuts. How does one even start doing something like that? Jordan comes from a family of artists - his great-grandfather created legendary cigarette mascot Joe Camel - so just like being scary, there must be something in the blood.
“I read my first King book in junior high,” Monsell tells us. “Seventh grade maybe. I started at the beginning with Carrie. My favorite books have been his short story anthologies - Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. The story ‘The Raft’ really stuck with me as I grew up in New England and swimming in lakes where there were wood rafts was common. It’s easy to point to the monsters and evil human beings in King’s body of work but he has also created so many compelling characters with admirable qualities.”
He’s handily provided a key explaining all the references:
Yep, absolute insanity. The piece will be available in poster form at Monsterpalooza, a massive horror and special effects expo in California, and on sale from Jordan’s Facebook page afterwards. His stuff is really great - check out his portfolio.
(Main image: Getty)
