Coke Highway - The Chase paper.

Coke ads have been kind of a rare thing to find on PAG. Why's that? Because Coke stuff is all over the place. Everybody posts it. It's almost been done to death. However, today I found this interesting specimen in my "TO BE REVIEWED" folder. It doesn't seem to feature rosy-cheeked tykes or wide-eyed teens, so in it goes!

The artist is Francis Chase, whose name was discernible with only a moment's squinting. His name brings up a slew of links, but very few images of his other pieces. Of course, there's the usual jackoffs cutting up these old magazines and selling the pages on eBay. It's odd that the selling company (see link) calls itself "Paper History", which would imply that they give a damn about preservation. Heh. Ironic.

Chase seems to favor a looser, brushier style, but if you look at the bottle, you can see he was also capable of working very realistically. I admire that kind of flexibility. It's no surprise, though. In order to get very far professionally as an artist, you need to be able to pull off a range of styles. Only when you become an art rock star do people come to you asking you to do "that one thing you always do". That's the luxury of a few famous artists. Mostly, professional art requires you to be as versatile as possible.

Here are a few other jobs by Francis Chase. That one Coke ad about break time at work is pretty cool.

Click for big.