When I Paint My Masterpiece

A character thinks they're a brilliant artist. Usually their art gains a modest amount of attention for the wrong reasons.

Malcolm in the Middle

Appearances

• My Favorite Martian: Season 1, episode 20, "My Nephew the Artist" (1964). Martin needs money, so he decides to create some paintings in the styles of several famous artists and sell them. When his art starts getting noticed, he claims Tim is really the artist to avoid the limelight.
• The Addams Family: Season 1 episode 9, "Morticia, the Sculptress" (1965). Morticia decides to become a sculptor, and she's very proud of her lumpy masterpieces, but the local art critic snubs her work, so Gomez pays Sam Picasso to pose as a buyer and convince Morticia she has talent.
• Sanford and Son: Season 4 episode 12, "Tower Power" (1974). When Fred sees some "assemblage art" at a museum, he decides to create his own. He spends all his time building his masterpiece: a tower of junk.
• ALF: Season 4, episode 16, "True Colors" (1990). When Lynne accidentally brings one of Alf's weird mixed-media paintings to her art class, her teacher assumes she painted it and goes on and on about how talented she is. When she tells Alf, he becomes convinced that he's a brilliant artist, dons a beret, and creates several more strange works of art.
• Wings: Season 6, episode 20, "Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young Man" (1995). Lowell builds a shoe rack out of old car parts for Casey for her birthday, and Casey shows it to an art gallery owner from New York, who finds Lowell's "art" intriguing and offers him his own art show.
• The Simpsons: Season 10, episode 19, "Mom and Pop Art" (1999). Homer tries to build a barbecue pit, but he ends up getting frustrated with teh project and smashing it. He tries to return it to the store, but they refuse to take. An art deal happens to notice Homer's smashed barbecue and thinks it's genius outsider art, so she sets up a gallery show for him. Unfortunately, his subsequent attempts at art didn't quite live up to the original, and his fans were not impressed. Frustrated once again, Homer consults Lisa for advice, and she tells him about environmental art, so he decides to flood the whole town, which is surprisingly well-accepted.
• Malcolm in the Middle: Season 2, episode 14, "Hal Quits" (2001). After a lackluster career day at Dewey's school, Hal gets fed up with his job and decides to take some time off to create a painting he's been visualizing for the last 15 years. He spends all his time in the garage painting, and when his masterpiece is finished, it has so many layers of paint that it just peels off the canvas.
• King of the Hill: Season 8, episode 9, "Ceci N'est Pas Une King of the Hill" (2004). Mr. Strickland tasks Hank with buying an art piece, and he's not having any luck, so Peggy volunteers to make one for him. An art dealer sees her sculpture and gives her an art show. Peggy is thrilled until the dealer announces to everyone that she's basically an illiterate inbred hillbilly as his way to sell the art.
• The Simpsons: Season 18, episode 7, "Ice Cream of Margie (with the Light Blue Hair)" (2006). Suddenly possessed of an excess of popsicle sticks, Marge starts using them to create sculptures of her family and friends. Her art makes the news, and a rich Texas pays for her to hold her own exhibition, which Homer destroys almost immediately by driving an ice cream truck through it.