Clown sightings: Bill The Clown

by Jack Brummet, Clown and Prankster Ed.

Reading the strange clown news lately, I remembered this image I snagged in the early days of the WWW. It was about 1992. Every new website was exciting, and we all passed around the few dozen really interesting ones. I don't remember which site this came from, but it was an archive of photos and early photoshop works. This image was—and remains—one of the creepiest I've seen on the web in the last 25 years, dated 1992, and titled "Bill The Clown," file name bill-the.gif.

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A John Peers clown painting (probably of Emmett Kelly) I bought years ago at a junk store

By Jack Brummet, Outsider Art Ed.

I know a lot of people don't like clowns. I'm pretty neutral on clowns (except maybe John Wayne Gacy). I bought this oil for $5 about 20 years ago at a junk/antique store on Lake City Way (it's about 2'x3'). I did some searching and found out the  artist is John Peers, a somewhat well-known painter of clowns. 

"This is Famous Bohemian San Francisco gallery artist (of the time) PEERS, from the 1950's. My mother and father both knew this man and he painted many paintings for them. I still have some of the nicest ones." Someone else: "Peers lived in South San Francisco and liked to drink. He was a friend of my Uncle Giovanni and should be about 75-80 is he is still alive. He would go to bard on Third Street (near Candlestick Park) and sell those clown paintings for $25.  My Uncle has 3 and they are rather good." 

I think the subject of the painting is Emmett Kelly who was a kind of hobo/clown amalgam (like Red Skelton)?

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Coulrophobia: [Don't] Send In The Clowns (warning: includes clown painting)

By Jack Brummet, Pop Culture Editor

On their radio show yesterday, Dave Ross & Luke Burbank  discussed clowns going extinct.  From my generation forward, people now perceive of clowns as being frightening rather than amusing or distracting.  This may have something to do with both John Wayne Gacy and Stephen King's novel, and movie, "It."  There have been more than a few scary clowns in movies over the last few years (like The Joker and his band in The Dark Knight, for example).  Our parents loved Emmett Kelly and Red Skelton, and clown cars at the circus, but somewhere along the line our generation and the following ones no longer much cotton to the clowns.


This is a painting I bought at a thrift store fifteen years ago.  It may be Emmett Kelly. . .

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The CVS Clown in Santa Monica (but it might technically be in Venice)

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor


This demented looking, Emmet Kelly-style clown in a tutu dominates the facade of a CVS drugstore on Main Street.  What next...chupacabras on the top of every WalMart?

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Send In The Clowns

Artist: unknown

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