Kids have crazy dreams.
They want to be cowboys. They want to be astronauts. They want to be football players.
Sometimes they have crazy dreams and want to be cowboy-astronaut-football players, all at the same time.
A lot of kids don’t grow up to fulfill the craziest of dreams, but Joe Everson is an exception.
“My mother said, ‘hey you could be a singing painter one day,’” Everson said. “I kind of laughed that off.”
Today, that’s exactly what Joe Everson has become.
Joe Everson: The singing painter
“It wasn’t until later, that my art manager, Dan Lyles, pitched the idea,” Everson said. “He said, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you could sing. Why don’t you show me a little bit of what you could do?’”
Everson showed Lyles that he had the singing part down.
“He said, ‘Hey that’s awesome, lets put that together with painting,’” Everson said. “Can you do that?”
Joe started practicing and eventually came out with a finished product.
Everson now travels the country painting a depiction of soldiers raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, while singing the national anthem.
And it’s not that simple.
After, pre-painting a blue sky, Everson uses a black background to paint the negative space behind the soldiers.
At first, it appears as though he is drawing random splotches. It’s difficult to make up what it is supposed to be.
Once Everson gets to the line, “O’er the land of the free,” he turns the canvas upside-down, or what is actually right-side-up.
What looked to be random teal patches of paint are revealed to be the background behind silhouettes of soldiers raising the flag pole.
Everson then uses a big brush with red and white dollops of paint, completing the United States flag in one stroke.
The finish product is a thing of beauty.
“Being an artist, you always want to be able to get yourself out there,” Everson said. “This is one unique way I get to do that.”
Everson has performed in front of a number of celebrities, and recently painted at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s house for the man himself.
His signature painting of the soldiers on Iwo Jima sold for $50,000, all going to charity.
How would an artist like traveling the United States to do this?
Simply put, “It’s is a dream come true,” Everson said.