La Salle artist paints Donald Trump, Joe Biden on pumpkins

President Donald Trump and his opponent in the November election, Joe Biden, showed their faces in Ottawa's Washington Square on Thursday: La Salle artist John Kettman made that happen by painting their mugs on pumpkins.

Kettman's "Trumpkin" went viral in 2016 after he painted both President Donald Trump and opponent Hillary Clinton on pumpkins and led to him and a friend's son getting to meet President Trump at a campaign rally.

He had been working at Scare Crow Fest in Ottawa, running a booth painting caricatures when the idea came to him. He threw together a painting of President Trump on a pumpkin and things blew up from there.

"I think I only painted one caricature that day, but I would never call that day a failure," Kettman said.

Kettman chose Washington Square because the statue of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas made the perfect back drop. Kettman said this election is just as important as the elections that surrounded the Civil War.

"I decided to do the ones this year as realistically and as professionally as possible," Kettman said. "This is such an important election because of the issues: Abortion, civil rights, racial inequality, the riots, unemployment is extremely high and all the fires. It's been so many bad things after another."

The idea, Kettman said, came after his uncle told him he should try and create a piece that fused art and politics. The first time he painted the pumpkins, he received more than one million views online.

"My goal was to paint them, both sides, as equally as I could," Kettman said. "We need people to get out there and vote regardless of what they believe."

The hair on Trump's head is a real wig Kettman purchased for the project and he said finding the materials wasn't simple. He had to cut the pumpkin's hair, himself.

Kettman has other projects he works on outside of the Trumpkin. He also paints tiny portraits on small items, like painting Nicolas Cage on a grain of rice or a bald eagle on a bird seed.

"There is no such thing as a stupid idea," Kettman said. "If you get an idea, just do it and see where it goes, even the dumb ideas. I painted a portrait of Aaron Rodgers on a Cheez-It and I ended up doing an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and was in every newspaper in the state."