My latest in the series of rock musician paintings features the iconic duo of lead singer Brian Johnson and guitarist Angus Young of the Australian rock band AC/DC. This band is a favourite of my wife Lisa. We saw them perform in Vancouver in December 2024.

I was tempted to call this “You Shook Me All Night Long” – my favourite of their songs – but I prefer shorter titles for my paintings. Together, Lisa and I agreed upon “Thunderstruck” as perfect for this.

I love the change of pace, a sort of cleansing of the artistic palette that these paintings allow. It’s fun to paint very rich colours, sharp and dramatic contrasts in lighting, and in this case the bizarre facial expressions that Angus makes as he really gets into the music.

The rock musician paintings now include Pete Townshend of The Who in “One With the Music,” the Fab Four in “Beatles on the Rooftop,” Bono and Edge of U2 in “With Or Without You,” Jagger and Richards of The Rolling Stones in “Mick and Keith,” Bruce Springsteen with Clarence Clemons and Steven Van Zandt in “Born to Run,” and Stevie Nicks in “One-Winged Dove.”

The references photos come from Alamy, using a license that permits use as reference material by an artist. The original photos, from a concert in 2015, were taken by Gerard van Bree.