Why are rubber ducks mysteriously appearing on thrift store artworks?

Minnesota: Attention, Louvre Museum: It might be a good idea to keep Seamus Liam O’Brien away from the Mona Lisa. Otherwise the St. Paul man might be tempted to paint a bright rubber duck somewhere on the famous painting and add his signature to da Vinci’s. O’Brien is a scenic artist, sign painter and muralist with fine arts degrees from Ohio State and the University of Florida. For the past few years he’s also been conducting a quirky sort of performance and visual art project.

He buys a piece of framed art for a few bucks at a thrift store. He paints a rubber duck somewhere on it and adds his name to the signature of the original artist. Then he sneaks the painting back on the shelf at the thrift store to amuse, delight or puzzle store employees or customers.

Thus, in O’Brien’s hands, a nautical scene by British painter Hugh Knollys of a three-masted, square-rigged sailing ship bravely shouldering its way through the tossing seas is enhanced by a cheerful yellow rubber duck bobbing in the foreground. According to O’Brien’s website, the project started when he bought the framed print of the Knollys painting on April 10, 2021, for $3 at the Hidden Treasures Thrift Store in St. Anthony. After painting in the rubber duck, he altered the signature to read “Hugh Knollys + Seamus Liam O’Brien.”

Then at 4:30 p.m. on April 17, he hung the picture back on the wall at the thrift store and wrote on his website, “A successful collaboration! Thank you Hugh for your contribution to the work.” O’Brien has repeated the process about 15 times, adding a rubber duck swimming with a towel to a nature scene by wildlife artist Guy Coheleach, substituting a rubber duck for a dog in a Norman Rockwell print of a boy fishing with his faithful pet, and reinterpreting a still life of a pitcher, tomatoes, grapes and garlic with a rubber duck modeled after Ben Franklin.

Artist Seamus Liam O’Brien poses for a portrait. Tribune News Service

O’Brien isn’t sure what happens to the artwork after he places it back in the store. But they appear to be snapped up by thrift store customers or employees when the pictures re-hit the shelves.

“Oh, gosh, we love getting those in here. It’s hilarious,” said Justin Rohr, an employee at the Hidden Treasures thrift store where O’Brien has placed several of his collaborations. “One of our own staff here has one, probably displayed in the living room of their house.” The reaction is also mainly positive when he has posted on social media about ducking up thrift store finds.

“I saw this this morning and couldn’t wait to get off work to track it down!” according to one reaction on the Nextdoor neighborhood app. That was for a rubber flamingo O’Brien painted on a $1.99 tropical beach scene found at Hidden Treasures.

“I absolutely love it! Now to find a place to hang it,” the commenter added.

Some commenters liken O’Brien’s unannounced art placements to the satiric England-based street artist Banksy. But a few say they don’t get it. “Why would you mar this beautiful work? Because it was cheap? What’s the point of this?” said one Nextdoor commenter about an O’Brien post showing a giant rubber duck in sunglasses dwarfing a family of deer in a print of an idyllic mountain landscape. “It’s getting attention,” O’Brien said.

Eye-catching rubber ducks are not far removed from the unusual world O’Brien inhabited as a kid: His parents, Terry and Camille O’Brien, were circus performers with a juggling and slack wire act.

Terry O’Brien learned to juggle as a kid in Massachusetts. He ended up performing at the Gay 90’s nightclub in Minneapolis in a bawdy vaudeville act to pay his way as a student studying German at Hamline University in St. Paul. Terry and Camille met in Washington, DC, where they both worked as linguists and and cryptologists with the National Security Agency, according to their son.

Improbably, they got married, ran off to the circus and raised a family travelling around the country as performers. When Seamus came along, he was recruited into the family act. He also performed as a costumed character at the Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, portraying Tigger, Goofy and Pluto.

Later, Seamus O’Brien did scenic artwork for amusement parks, theaters, trade shows, retail stores and museums, and art production, installation and management work for art studios and galleries. Maybe putting ducks into the world for people to discover satisfies an instinct to create something visually entertaining. “It’s in my blood,” O’Brien said. “I’m getting probably more out of this than the audience.”

O’Brien, 49, currently has a day job with Target Corp. as a project manager, designing and building sets for product photo shoots and commercials. But his history with rubber ducks predates his thrift store project. He once created a large-scale exhibit called “Happiness” of about two dozen 6-foot-tall drawings of individual rubber ducks. O’Brien said the giant cartoonish ducks are a reflection of the Barnum & Bailey world of his youth. There’s awe and wonder, but also a touch of menace and unease. Cute, but also creepy. For his thrift store project, O’Brien browses thrift store art works for something that would be complemented by the addition of a rubber duck.

“You never know when you go in what you’re going to find,” he said.

“It’s got to have the right look,” he added. “Nautical scenes are great. Landscapes are great. I can work with a portrait.” He tends to be attracted to obscure images by relatively unknown artists. “I guess I could put a duck on Mona Lisa’s head if I could find that piece,” he said. “Though that might be too much. I’d have to think about it. If they’re too well known, it’s not fun at that point.” One example that inspired him was a $2.99 print that he got at a Savers in Columbia Heights that originally showed a hunter releasing a duck decoy into a shimmering body of water. “This was begging for it,” O’Brien said. His alteration replaced the duck decoy with a truck-sized rubber duck that dwarfed the hunter, his boat and his dog.

He typically uses acrylic paint to add a rubber duck to a picture, using one of the actual toy rubber ducks he’s acquired as a model. “I need to look at something when I paint,” he said. “I can’t make things up.” He sometimes mimics the style of the original painting to better integrate the duck into the image.

Tribune News Service