Longtime music icon John Mellencamp's artistic expression has never been limited to song.The acclaimed singer-songwriter John Mellencamp has been an accomplished painter for more than four decades. This definitive survey-curated by Mellencamp himself-of his large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media assemblages documents America's heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with an antiestablishment frown and a rich sense of narrative. "Although we may primarily know Mellencamp as a rock star, one of the highest-selling of all time and a Hall of Famer, he is also a great painter, as this book shows. Not a musician who also paints... No, John legitimately belongs in the modern art pantheon, " says Bob Guccione Jr. in his essay that delineates the connection of Mellencamp's music and art, both imbued with the earnest voice of America's heartland.