Brendan O'Connell returns to his hometown Walmart

• Joeff Davis
• Brandon O'Connell painting his Lou Reed tribute at the Tucker Walmart

Brendan O'Connell returned to his hometown of Tucker, Ga this week to visit the Walmart. For most people, that isn't a news story, but the Georgia native and Emory graduate has become famous for painting in Walmarts. After working for years with little recognition, he has recently been profiled in the New Yorker and been featured on the "Colbert Report" and "CBS Sunday Morning." His paintings, which often depict scenes or products inside of Walmarts, have sold for as much as $40,000. O'Connell was also in town working on the Everyartist Live project.

On Tuesday, O'Connell described growing up in Tucker as a typical 70's "slit your wrists" suburban upbringing. He did not start painting until after graduating from Emory in 1990, learning by studying the book Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain by Betty Edwards. He then moved to France where he says he drew 10,000 portraits while being a street artist outside of Notre Dame and in the south of France. He see parallels between his work at Walmart and Notre Dame, saying that Notre Dame is actually a more commercial environment then Walmart. "There is nothing more commercial then a touristic environment," he said.

O'Connell chose Walmarts as his subject because they are the "most visited interior architecture on the planet," with 11,000 stores in 27 countries worldwide. He describes Walmart as being "the house that holds all the brands," and that for this reason alone it is worthy of artistic exploration. "Consumption is the core of the human experience right now and no one is taking it as very matter of factly as I am," he says.

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• Joeff Davis
• O'Connell briefly displayed his Lou Reed tribute in the produce section

The Walmart series has expanded into "painting very cold things in a very warm way." His work is not about political statements or jokes and he says he disdains work that is. "The problem with art that has a punch line is that you are either preaching to the choir or offending the other group, that kind of art does not interest me. I want to collapse high brow and low brow work."

Although he has only started painting inside Walmarts in the last 8 months he has been painting from his own photographs, taken stealthily inside the stores, for the last 8 years. After being contacted by Walmart, he was invited into the stores to work. He liked painting from photographs because it allowed him to "accentuate certain qualities," he says, mentioning the blurring of words as one approach that allows him to get closer to his visual vision through painting. He says he got the idea for painting inside Walmarts because it is one of the few places people go to interact in rural America. "Walmart is one of the most democratic populist places on earth," he says. "No where else do you find such a wide range of socio-economic classes."

At the Tucker Walmart, management moved him to the produce aisle. He spent much of his time painting bananas "in a tribute to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground," he said looking up from the shopping cart easel holder he has created to paint from when he is visiting Walmart.

It is hard to not see some irony of painting a Lou Reed tribute inside a Walmart or selling expensive paintings of stores that are notorious for low wages but O'Connell says his work is not meant to be ironic. "I am aware of the different levels and different interpretations but I am really going at earnestly is just trying to paint this amazing visual space." O'Connell says that the diverse reactions to his work is positive and that it shows that he has hit a nerve "people have diametrically opposing views to what I am doing," he says adding, "I feel that sadness is connected to beauty."