HOMAGEKOP8/15

The title of this painting was derived as a homage to the King of Pop representing the eight times Dick Zimmerman had either collaborated or socialized with Michael Jackson over a fifteen-year period.
The composition was created using reference photographs from three photo sessions: the Thriller album cover (1982), the exclusive wedding portraits with Michael and Lisa Marie (1994), and the ET album narrated by Michael Jackson (1984). All elements in the composition are symbolic and have a specific purpose.

The painting was completed July 2009.

The painting was unveiled on Entertainment Tonight on September 18th, 2009. This segment can be viewed from our website.

Limited edition copies of this painting, specially framed, signed, dated, numbered and embossed for authenticity by Dick Zimmerman, can be purchased on a first-come basis commencing with #1 until all issues are printed or sold.

There will be no re-issuing.

Renowned Celebrity Portrait Artist Dick Zimmerman to Unveil His HOMAGEKOP8/15 Painting of the Late Michael Jackson on National Television

Tampa, FL - September 8, 2009 - Prominent Celebrity portrait artist, Dick Zimmerman announced that he will soon unveil his tribute painting of the late Michael Jackson, whom Mr. Zimmerman worked with on numerous occasions. The painting is titled "HOMAGEKOP8/15."

Zimmerman, considered to be the top celebrity photographer throughout the 70's and 80's in Hollywood, created this painting as his personal statement to the King of Pop. "As I started as a portrait painter, and as my technique was always realism in oils, and as I always painted exactly what came out of the camera, I took up photography to make my reference photographs for my paintings that much better, and during those years met and worked with Michael."

Zimmerman went back to painting full time in 1991, and the homage, completed in August--which has yet to be nationally and internationally unveiled--shows colorful, poignant images of the late Michael Jackson. The composition for the painting was created from images taken from the three photo sessions that Zimmerman and Jackson collaborated on throughout their 15 years of working together. The "Thriller" cover, the ET album narrated by Michael, and the exclusive wedding portraits of Michael and Lisa Marie Presley. The homage was of significance to Mr. Zimmerman as he came to know Michael Jackson on both a professional and personal level.

Mr. Zimmerman was the creator of the iconic Thriller album cover. The white suit worn by Michael in those famous images was borrowed from Zimmerman just before the photoshoot. The suit hangs in the Grammy museum to this day. Zimmerman collaborated or socialized with Jackson eight times over the 15-year period, and incorporated these encounters with a tile reading 8/15. The centerpiece of the painting is focused on the Thriller cover, with the other images strategically positioned to symbolize Michael's life as Zimmerman saw him. "There was no accident in my positioning of each element in the composition, it's my personal statement about Michael...they all have meaning and purpose along with something personal to me."

Updates will be available on his website at http://www.dickzimmerman.com

Michael Jackson's oil portrait "Thriller 2009")

Michael Jackson, the innovative musical genius of his generation, left a legacy that changed the face and pace of Rock music forever. He is gone, but his music and images live on. He is linked to Dick Zimmerman, masterpiece portrait artist, labeled by the public as “The Rembrandt of the 21st Century”.
Zimmerman started as a portrait painter, and because of his very realistic style, painting exactly what was on film, he moved into photography to enhance his reference photographs. He then studied photography and found he was fascinated by the medium, and was so successful that he got caught up in it for twenty two years and at that time gained his reputation known as the celebrity image maker. But he longed to return to painting, his first love.

Dick has been painting again for the last eighteen years and has just completed an oil painting, a tribute to Michael Jackson, entitled “HomageKOP8/15” using his reference photographs taken of Michael through the last fifteen years, which they had created together. During that period, he had the opportunity to do three photographic sessions with Michael: The Thriller Album cover, the exclusive wedding portraits of Lisa and Michael, and Steven Spielberg’s ET Narration cover. You can read the story of the creation of the Thriller album on our website, www.dickzimmerman.com.

Dick will be traveling to Los Angeles this week and will present the first copy to the Jackson family, and selected museums throughout the US. During that time there will be numerous interviews and TV appearances.

During this time, Dick will still be making time for private commissions, and anyone interested can contact him here

Art like this is a double investment. It increases in actual value over time with the acceleration of the repute of the artist, but it is much more of a private investment, for it pays personal dividends in priceless pleasure every time you look at it.

Posted by Kyle C.

Michael Jackson left behind the indelible footprint of a giant talent whose artistry changed the course of music history. He is mourned by millions in every country on earth, and he shall be sorely missed. And now that is silenced. We are left with his memory and his music.
Throughout the years of 1982-1991, I had the unique privilege of having three exclusive portrait sittings with Michael. The first was the Thriller Album, the second was the wedding portraits with he and Lisa Marie, and third when he narrated the ET Album for Steven Spielberg. During these years, I was very fortunate to have had some very personal conversations and came to know him on a level of intimacy that gave me insights into his character that impressed me deeply. I am sharing these thoughts.
Michael Jackson was a brilliant, creative performing artist. We spent many private hours together creating and conversing during the years I worked with him. To read about him and his personality, his thoughts and inner life revealed to me, go to my website, http://www.dickzimmerman.com/, and click on “stories.”

Dick Zimmerman's magic portraits

Dick Zimmerman, Rembrandt of our time

How wonderful to have a compelling talent that has been touched by Angels.

Such is the talent of Dick Zimmerman, ww.dickzimmerman.com, my old friend of twenty years, who has been known as the celebrity photographer of our time, now turned to his old love of painting.

Dick is a true genius, who, as you can see in this portrait of John Travolta and Kelly Preston, can capture on canvas a spiritual instant. Like the Mona Lisa, the subject's personality, a moving flicker of light, the best of the person, the inner self, caught forever through the eye and brush of this amazing artist. I am in awe. Go to his website and watch the video, see the many portraits, read his intriguing inside stories about Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Salvador Dali, Michael Jackson, Tom Selleck.

I am writing his bio, and there is a plethora of material on this unusual and gracious man, for his photographic career carried him into places and lives of people the entrance into which are forbidden to the normal human being. Such are the ways of genius---somehow their talent, when blended with boundless energy, a sense of purpose, an ethical foundation and that something else that seems inherent in this rare combination of beingness, opens doors into a labryinth of wonders that we the comparatively mundane never dream of knowing or seeing.
I intend to help him become who and what he deserves, to be recognized as the Rembrandt of the century, the Da Vinci of our time. He will come to the home of the subject, set up the whole scene, and then use his skills toned over three decades as a celebrity photographer to capture images on his digital cameras, and then return to his studio to paint them on canvas. That is where he is able to transform technical skills in photography with traditional portraiture, and while that is not unique as a method of reproducing images on canvas, his eye and talent of putting it all together to draw out the thetan, the spiritual beingness of the subject is what makes him the unique artist he is. I want to help this man.

We are taking commissions now. Usually, after a sitting, the portrait is complete and shipped within sixteen weeks.

Dick usually works from nine at night until four in the morning Working at night leaves him undisturbed and free to become his art and meld with his subjects to produce that certain thing that only he can do for his subjects. I consider this a privilege to work with Dick. Smoking cigars, sitting out on the windy porch of his sixth story condo overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, talking about art, our Church, our goals and aspirations, planning the future, is a real joy.

Call me if you want to schedule a sitting for a portrait. 800-781-8227. The fee depends on the size of the canvas and the number of faces. He prefers to paint a life-size face on his portraits. So if there is a large group, as in some of the paintings, the canvas has to be large enough to accommodate each head as clse to normal size as possible. It is a privilege to know and represent this great man.