When The Daily Show senior political correspondent Hasan Minhaj needed a dope illustrator to make pieces for his upcoming show Homecoming King, he called on his buddy Sam Spratt.
A Brooklyn-based digital painter—a classic oil technique used on computer tablets—Spratt graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010 and took to the internet via shared content while working as the staff illustrator for Gawker and Gizmodo.
Spratt’s work, which ranges from portraiture to the new wave of ultra-artistic advertising and promotion, pops up in incongruent places—from the Long Day’s Journey into Night theater poster to interpretations of Angry Birds. He also has an impressive list of comic drawings and hip hop album covers.
Sam Spratt’s first illustration for a Broadway play. Read more about it here: http://www.richardsolomonblog.com/2016/04/sam-spratt-long-days-journey-into-night.html.Sam Spratt’s Red Bird. See more Angry Birds art here: http://www.samspratt.com/angry-birds-for-rovio/.Album cover for Logic’s Under Pressure (Deluxe). (Sam Spratt)Game Informer cover for the January 2016 issue. (Sam Spratt)Study in Scotch. (Sam Spratt)Portrait of Daenerys from HBOs Game of Thrones. (Sam Spratt)Illustration of the Foo Fighters for Rolling Stone. (Sam Spratt)Illustration of Janelle Monáe for Billboard Magazine. (Sam Spratt)
Minhaj, whose show explores his personal story as it fits into the landscape of the American Dream, wanted a Norman Rockwell-eque style of vignettes that Minhaj covers (hilariously) in his show. The result is this small collection of Spratt paintings, “New Brown America,” with explanations by Minhaj as posted on http://www.homecomingkingshow.com.
‘Alone on the Bus’ by Sam Spratt / Some of my worst memories growing up were on the bus. I still don’t know how it’s a mandated policy to put 100 hormonal teenagers in a metal box for an hour and hope fights don’t break out; it’s basically World Star on wheels. Bullying and bus dynamics in middle school are complicated: at times visceral and blatant, but most days it came in a more subtle form: exclusion. On display and surrounding me daily was everything I hoped for: the flirting, the jokes, the high fives, the desire to fit in somewhere on the social hierarchy. The school bus was the most social form of isolation.‘Patel Brothers’ by Sam Spratt / Walk into any Indian grocery store and you’ll recognize a very distinct smell. I don’t know what it is; the daal, the dried Shaan masala, the bootlegged VHS tapes, but its uncanny and universal. The ambience is always a little left of what you’d see in a traditional grocery store, but the strangeness makes it familiar. The lights in the back flickered, the price tags were hand written and illegible, but the store owner knew customers by name and called my dad Najme Saheb every time we walked in. I miss those days, but I can relive them—even if its just for a moment—whenever I walk into a Patel Brothers.‘Prom’ by Sam Spratt / By the time my senior year of high school rolled around I had never been to a school dance, I had been cut from the basketball team for the third year in a row, and I had just gotten off of Acutane. I was pretty much crushing it. Sneaking out of my house to go to prom was the most badass thing I had ever done. For the first time in my life I actually grabbed the reigns of an opportunity and just went for it. No matter the consequences, that night was the epitome of my American Dream.‘October 9th, 2014’ by Sam Spratt / Standup comedy really is the mafia. We all start off as runners in the streets in hopes of one day becoming made men. We pine away for years in the back of dingy bars waiting for that one opportunity that could change everything. On October 9th, 2014 I got the call to audition for one of the most intelligent, poignant, and talented political satirists of the modern era. I had been doing standup 10 years, 1 month, and 9 days when I was hired to join The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Jon took a chance on me, believed in me, and changed my life forever. Dreams really do come true.
