Expelled from New York City's School of Visual Arts in 1978 (where a teacher called his work "fascist" and "schizophrenic"), Joe Coleman scratched out a living performing as a one-man freak show, biting the heads off rats. "I had all this rage," recalls the painter, the son of an alcoholic and the survivor of a Catholic upbringing. "I just got so frustrated I wanted to explode." But after 25 years of (figuratively) chomping away and following his own muse, Coleman, 46, has more fulfilling options for earning his rent money. From his Brooklyn studio, a dimly lit apartment crammed with medical oddities, torture devices, and mummies, he devotes himself to rendering intricately imagined scenes of the tormented and alienated--carnival geeks, criminals, and madmen.
The waiting list (now three years long) for Coleman's macabre canvases has included such suffering Hollywood souls as Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. Not surprisingly, Korn frontman Jonathan Davis is also a fan: He and Coleman plan to open a museum in Los Angeles showcasing serial killer memorabilia (potential exhibits include Ted Bundy's car and John Wayne Gacy's clown costume), a joint project that's sure to win over new fans, if not Coleman's detractors at SVA. "The irony is that I was asked to be an adviser there last year," says Coleman. "I was counseling people to get out of art school."
