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A Passion For Painting
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Published: August 10, 2008
ZEPHYRHILLS - It isn't easy to make Jack Nicholson look like Jeff Goldblum.
Dade City artist Mark Hannah unintentionally accomplished that feat recently. Only Hannah wasn't applying makeup on a Hollywood set. He was brushing paint onto the walls of Lake Jovita home.
"This is the most difficult piece I've done," said Hannah, gesturing toward his rendering of a poster for "Chinatown," the 1974 Nicholson movie directed by Roman Polanski. "When I started doing Nicholson, I started getting this early Sinatra look. Then Jeff Goldblum came out of nowhere.
"I was like, 'Wait, what's going on here?' It's been a real challenge for me."
Hannah is used to pushing himself creatively.
He enjoys it, which is good, because he does it for a living.
In November 2006, he made an elaborate 12-foot-high horse out of papier-mache and metal pipe.
The horse, which has since appeared in Dade City's Christmas parade and Little Everglades Steeplechase, as well as Tampa's Gasparilla parade, has legs with rippling muscles and a tail that streams behind it, as if it were streaking down the stretch at the Kentucky Derby. Atop the horse is a jockey in a two-point stance.
The project took months to complete.
Hannah also is a muralist and sign painter, and his drawings have been used as templates for tattoos. He has does some sculpting, too.
Becky Taylor, who owns Dade City Animal Clinic with her veterinarian husband, Chet, said Hannah recently painted old-time Dade City scenes and other pictures in the clinic's kennel. Taylor, who has known Hannah since childhood, said it took him parts of six months to complete.
"He's always been really creative," she said. "I didn't have classes with him in high school, but I know a lot of people who did, and they always said he was always sketching something. He would draw cartoons. You give Mark anything and he can draw it.
"In the dog kennels, he opened up a dog encyclopedia and just went to town."
He's Been Everywhere, Man
Hannah also is known locally - and internationally - as a guitarist with the once-thriving rockabilly band Skinny McGee and his Mayhem Makers, which featured Shawn Gravitt as singer-bassist Skinny McGee and harmonica player Chris Bell.
Until an amicable, self-imposed hiatus a couple of years ago, the band often played around the Tampa Bay area, from The Osceola Tavern in Dade City to Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa to venues on upscale Davis Islands.
In February 2004, the band recorded at legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., made famous in the 1950s by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, as well as Johnny Cash, whom Gravitt often was said to sound like.
"We played in Orlando and did a couple shows in Vegas and L.A.," Hannah said. "We went to Amsterdam a couple times, Barcelona and did a European tour through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy."
Hannah said he sometimes misses playing in the band, although he is still good friends with Bell and Gravitt.
"I'm just glad I was able to do all that stuff when we did," Hannah said. "I don't even know if we could afford to go over there now. Those were some great times, man - a good way to spend my 30s."
Now in his early 40s, Hannah has been married seven years to Jenny, once Skinny McGee's self-proclaimed biggest fan. A massage therapist and yoga enthusiast, she now runs Hannah's Healing Hands in Dade City.
Mark said he needed his wife's muscle-soothing powers after completing a Sistine Chapel-style mural. That was on a ceiling above an outdoor walkway at the Lake Jovita home where he painted the movie posters. The project involved scaffolding and bending his head at odd angles for long hours.
"It was the first time I ever painted cherubs before," he said. "If I have to learn to do some kind of ancient brush stroke from a painting from before Christ, I'll do my homework and figure it out."
The Hollywood homage also required ample research.
A poster of "High Noon," starring Gary Cooper, was just to the left of "Chinatown," which was next to a "Jaws" reproduction.
Mad Magazine Inspired Him
A bottle of IBC root beer in his hand, Hannah said he was painting it all free-hand.
"You basically just look at a better picture, get it under a good light and look at the color breakdown," he said. "I have to break it all down like a jigsaw puzzle."
On the other side of the small home theater were completed renditions of posters for "Gone With the Wind," "The Godfather," "The Seven-Year Itch," "Vertigo" and "Casablanca."
Other than Nicholson, Hannah said Humphrey Bogart's face was the most difficult to reproduce.
"Looked like Boris Karloff was in there," he said.
Other posters included "Rocky," "Citizen Kane," "Dr. No" and "Annie Hall."
As a child, Hannah said he drew artistic inspiration from Mad magazine.
No longer a Mayhem Maker, Hannah continues to make music, often jamming with a band that changes names often.
Hannah said he is working on a song titled "Skunk Ape" about thecreature said to roam Florida's swamps."I love that stuff," he said.
For information about Hannah's work, call (352) 467-0664 or e-mail him at rockinruby@msn.com.
Keyword: Everyday People, to watch a video of Mark Hannah at work. Reporter Geoff Fox can be reached at (813) 779-4613 or gfox@tampatrib.com.
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