Jim Carrey Is… a Painter?

Jim Carrey: actor, comedian, and… painter?

Recently Vulture published an article about Maurizio Cattelan’s LA Art Tour. To artnet News’ surprise, one stop he took was at Jim Carrey’s painting studio. Who knew that the bona fide comedian is also an art lover?

Indeed in an interview with David Letterman, the actor says he owns a cabin in Canada with a “barn full of skulls…cause I do my arts and crafts up there, I make lamp shades. It’s all organic.”

The actor may or may not make lamp shades, but either way, Carrey has been drawing and painting since he was a young child. According to Vulture, the actor’s studio is filled with portraits of women, self-portraits, and images of pop culture icons such as James Dean. He employs a technique in which he applies wet paint on top of an old layer that has dried, and then he scrapes off the new layer to create a silkscreen illusion. After that, the expressive Carrey slashes the canvas and sometimes stitches it back together.

Like a true entertainer, Carrey also sculpted a puppet of his Dumb and Dumber To co-star, Jeff Daniels, in his studio, and used the puppet to debut his ventriloquist skills on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.

Jim Carrey certainly joins the list of unexpected celebrity artists (see “George W. Bush is Still a Bad Painter” and “Miley Cyrus Makes Erotic Sculptures“).