Kait Loves Ketchup

Kait with her painting “Straight Out Of Ketchup” 24x36in Oil on Canvas

I saw a photo online of a ketchup bottle with a bunch of bubbles, and I thought huh, they almost look like balloons. Then it hit me. I could make the Heinz Ketchup bottles have red balloons floating out of them. I thought it would be so funny to have Andy Warhol hanging from a bunch of balloons. The balloons floating out of the bottles reminded me of smoke stacks which Pittsburgh has quite a few of. My original idea was to place Warhol coming out of the famous Homestead smoke stakes and floating over Homestead. As my luck would have it, when I went online to look for reference photos of the Homestead smoke stacks, the Heinz factory smoke stacks popped onto my screen. It was like it was fate. Originally the Heinz factory has two smoke stacks on top of their building. One reading Heinz, the other 57. I replaced the stacks with two Heinz ketchup bottles and the balloons to fill in as the smoke. I added “Straight Out Of Ketchup” as a nod to my other Andy Warhol painting where he’s wearing a “Straight Out Of Pittsburgh” shirt. The slogan “Straight Out Of Ketchup” is also meant to be a play on words since Andy is literally holding onto balloons like he just came straight out of the ketchup bottle. I LOVE this painting and everything it stands for.

Kait’s Newest Painting Featuring Andy Warhol, “Straight Out Of Ketchup”

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Recently I’ve found some time to get to some passion projects, and if there’s one thing I’m passionate about it’s ketchup. You know the saying, “ I put ketchup on my ketchup?” Yeah, I’m that person. This time around I decided to incorporate two Pittsburgh icons. The founding place of the world’s greatest Heinz Ketchup, and Andy Warhol.