I'm Going to Graceland

About I'm Going to Graceland

This contemporary oil painting by Toni Hamel features an Elvis statue in a surreal setting.

Toni Hamel creates worlds that, true to the surrealist genre, offer a unique, imaginative and alternate vision of reality. Her paintings are often imbued with humour, even satire, to depict people and events that are icons of pop culture. This piece features the famous 1950s-60s American singer, Elvis Presley, guitar in hand, as a statue, installed in the middle of a desert. A family of four, leashed dog in tow, stands looking up at the enormous statue. The back end of a travel trailer can be seen on the edge of the frame.
The colours are muted—grays, blues, earth tones, and white. The painting itself is a tondo—the round framing gives the impression of the view through a camera lens. Hamel is often influenced by the sixties popular culture she grew up with, and music plays a big part in that.

(This painting was) “Inspired by Paul Simon's popular song "Graceland": pilgrimages to historically sacred sites have now been replaced by visits to locales made famous by popular culture. Elvis is bigger than Jesus, don't you know.” Toni Hamel

Toni Hamel was born in Italy in 1961. In the early 1980s, she acquired a BFA from
the Accademia di Belle Arti of Lecce in Italy. Upon arriving in Canada, she furthered her studies and attained a post-graduate Certificate in Computer Graphics from Sheridan College (Canada, 1991).
The recipient of several awards, among others, she received the Golden Key National Honour Society Award from the University of Toronto (Specialist Programme in Psychology, 1997) and the Lubiam Prize (Milan, 1983).
Her work has been exhibited in public and commercial galleries in Canada, the USA, and Europe. It is included in the public collections of Mr. J.J. Abrams, Ms. Whoopi Goldberg, Ms. Julia Roberts, the Archives of Ontario/Government of Ontario, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Omer DeSerres Corporation, as well as many private international collections. Toni Hamel lives and works in Kingston, Ontario.