“Patriot,” an oil painting by Fred Einaudi
 
According to an interview from 2013, artist Fred Einaudi once took one of those bullshit “career day” quizzes in school, which duly spat out the galling result that he was a good candidate to someday be driving a bus for a living. Thankfully, Einaudi, who was already voraciously drawing monsters by the time he was in the second grade, didn’t follow that line of advice; thanks to the encouragement of his high school art teacher, a man named John Robinson, he followed his true calling, painting.
 

“The Chocolate Donut”
 
After giving art school a try for a year, the San Francisco-based Einaudi dropped out, preferring to draw inspiration from artists like American painter Andrew Wyeth. He was driven by a need to create “pictures out there that don’t exist and which you have a need to see.”

Einaudi’s images feel distinctly like foreshadowing when it comes to the plight our planet is currently undergoing with respect to the rising global temperatures—many of them deliver a one-two punch to the gut as they lead the viewer to ponder a time in the future where humans will be forced to exist in a world that is very different than the one we are currently collectively destroying on a daily basis.

That said, I am not only a fan of Mr. Einaudi’s gorgeously grim art, but also that he gave zero fucks about his “assigned” career path and instead followed one that he was clearly destined for on his own terms. More of Einaudi’s gloomy and ominous paintings follow, many of them delightfully NSFW.
 

“The Mermaid”
 

“Buttonmaker”
 

“Hunger”
 

 

“Paddy Paws”
 

 

“Extinction”
 

“Homunculus”
 

“Tulips”
 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Dollhouses of doom: Lori Nix’s post-apocalyptic dioramas