They say a picture is worth a thousand words and, while that may very well be true, sometimes you need the words fo tell the story that brought the picture to life.  

Not only is Luke Carruthers an extremely talented Airdrie artist, he's also a music lover.  When he's not creating his art, he likes to go online to talk music with fellow music aficionados, discussing collecting music and telling stories about shows they've seen.  Much of that love for music goes back into his artwork, with a lot of it musically inspired.  

Perhaps his best-known work is a portrait he created of the late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie out of 11,300 pennies.  That picture is now on display at the National Music Centre in Calgary in an exhibition called "Community Storytellers."

nd (Eric) Clapton was there and a couple of other guys, Jeff Beck was there, and Hendrix comes on stage."

"He was kind of a fairly unknown artist at the time and he opened with Sgt. Pepper and the song had only been released for three days and he killed it, right.  So he (McCartney) told this story.  So when I came home I kind of had this idea of painting the Sgt. Pepper album cover into Hendrix's afro as if it was this kind of idea that he had.  So yeah, that was the genesis of that."

The painting is now hanging in Jam's Restaurant in Airdrie.

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