In John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages, a survey of the artist s large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media pieces documents America s heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with a kind of anti-establishment frown and a rich sense of narrative. A foreword by Dr. Lou Zona, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Butler Institute of American Art, and an essay by New York Times critic and cultural writer David L. Shirey put Mellencamp s work in context as a true American painter. As his musical career flourished, Mellencamp began to paint in the 1980s with an early affinity for portraiture influenced by the works of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. His kinship with the German Expressionism of the early twentieth century, with its existential focus on the human condition, serves as the foundation for the development of Mellencamp s oeuvre. An interview by SPIN magazine founder Bob Guccione Jr. further delineates the connection of Mellencamp s music and art, both carefully composed through the structural requirements of harmony, rhythm and order, and imbued with the small-town, earnest voice of America s Heartland.