Imploding the Mirage
Thomas Blackshear II crosses paths with one of America’s most popular rock groups.
Ayear ago Thomas Blackshear II had never heard of the Las Vegas rock band The Killers. Not “Mr. Brightside” or “Somebody Told Me,” and nothing from the chart-topping albums Hot Fuss or Sam’s Town. The Killers were a completely foreign entity to the painter. “I’m mostly into music from the 1970s,” the painter says. “Some R&B, funk, even disco here and there. Occasionally some rock ‘n’ roll. But I hadn’t heard of The Killers.”
So when Blackshear received an unexpected email from the band’s manager, he had to do some research to familiarize himself with who was reaching out to him. “I just didn’t know who they were, which shows you the kind of box I’m in,” he says. “But I agreed to talk with them and hear them out.”
Unbeknownst to Blackshear, Killers lead singer and songwriter Brandon Flowers had been following the painter’s career and was a fan of his work. Late in 2019, the band was working on their sixth studio album and they were hunting down potential album artwork when they settled on a 20-year-old painting by Blackshear, The Dance of the Wind and the Storm, which was a piece the artist did for the Greenwich Workshop. “The whole idea of the painting was this sort of art deco kind of look. It was my first time exploring that idea. Greenwich did some prints of it. The prints sold OK, not great, but OK. I kept the original painting in my house and didn’t think much about it,” he says, adding that the original painting later changed hands but he retained the copyright of the image. “All those years later, this band wants it for their project.”
Blackshear’s painting of two human-shaped cloud figures sweeping through a desert valley would go on to become the cover of the band’s newest album, Imploding the Mirage, which was released in August. And as the band developed the album and started promoting singles, they also started asking for more artwork, eventually including five paintings in the liner notes and as singles covers.
The musicians even considered The Dance of the Wind and the Storm another member of the band. “They just look like gods,” Flowers said about the painting in an August interview in the British music magazine NME. “I just started to see a path open up in what these two people could represent for me. We blew up terrible low-res versions of them and stuck them up in the studio. I would go to them when I needed help with lyrics and when we needed help with sonics, or [to decide] which songs were making the record. It became a member of the band. There are direct lines that will just take you to the painting.”
Completing the journey of the painting, Blackshear even helped arrange a meeting with the painting’s owner. Today the painting is in Flower’s personal art collection.
“They’ve been really nice and gracious,” Blackshear says. “Being an artist, I just do what I do and I’m not always aware of who sees my work. So when someone tells me they’re a fan it catches me by surprise. I’m glad the work is reaching a whole new generation of people.”