Memes on Sascha Brawer

Paranoid Parrot

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This painting joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Paranoid Parrot is the go-to reaction image for that special 3 a.m. thought spiral: a coworker says “sounds good” instead of “sounds great,” and within four seconds you’ve reconstructed an entire conspiracy against you.

What I’m genuinely proud of here is the beak, built up the traditional way: fat over lean, each layer a touch oilier than the last, so the paint stays flexible instead of cracking apart.

Overly Attached Girlfriend

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Overly Attached Girlfriend is built around one unblinking stare into the camera, captioned with lines that turn ordinary affection into something a few notches past healthy. I’ll admit I never quite got the joke, though: if anything, I think people should care more about each other, not less. Sure, there’s a line where caring tips into something else — but crossing that line isn’t funny either, just concerning. So the whole subtext of this meme is honestly lost on me.

Success Kid

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Success Kid started life as a 2007 snapshot of a toddler on a beach, fist clenched, looking improbably pleased with himself — it went on to caption a decade of online “mission accomplished” moments.

People react to this painting in two very different ways: some see a cute, determined little kid; others feel a bit uneasy, reading the clenched fist as a stand-in for toxic masculinity. I’m firmly in the second camp. Painting is usually meditative for me — I rarely feel much of anything while I work. This one was the exception: I had a genuine, negative reaction to the image, and it stuck with me the whole time I was painting it.

Disaster Girl

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Disaster Girl is the 2005 photo of a young girl smirking in front of a burning house, endlessly recaptioned to place her calmly watching over one disaster or another — one of the internet’s most recognizable memes.

I painted this one mainly as an exercise in older oil techniques I hadn’t tried before — hair, skin tones, and smoke each behave very differently on canvas, and I wanted to get a feel for all three at once. The eyes gave me more trouble than I expected, and I can already see where I’d do them differently now. But I’m genuinely happy with the skin: building it up through several thin, semi-transparent layers, the way older paintings often were made, gives it a subtle shimmer that a single opaque layer just can’t produce. Still plenty to learn, but this one taught me a lot.

Anti-Joke Chicken

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

The Anti-Joke Chicken is an image macro built around a chicken photographed mid-stare, used to caption jokes that set up a punchline and then deliberately refuse to deliver one. Instead you get the flat, literal, faintly deadpan answer — the format traces back to the oldest anti-joke there is: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.” No twist, no wordplay, just the obvious answer stated completely straight. That’s the whole joke — the anticlimax is the punchline.