Todd Schorr has painted two large format paintings in which he addresses his influences as an artist - one reflects on the cartoon perspective and the other on the horror film perspective. In this video Todd offers insight into how the pieces came about and some of the subject matter in each.

Todd Schorr: American Surreal is the first mid-career retrospective of the Los Angeles-based artist. Schorr is a leading figure in Southern California's cartoon-based movement, dubbed Pop Surrealism, which embraces low-brow culture and a ribald graphic style indebted to pop sources such as Mad magazine. Schorrs astonishing, highly polished realism, (inspired by Bosch, Brueghel and Dali), sets him apart from his best-known peers such as Camille Rose Garcia, Gary Baseman, and Mark Ryden. The exhibition, curated by SJMAs Senior Scholar and Curator of Collections Susan Landauer, is accompanied by a book published by Last Gasp, San Francisco.

Exhibition runs June 20 through September 16, 2009 at the San Jose Museum of Art