Microsoft’s weird collection of Paint art

In my handful of trips to Microsoft’s Redmond campus, I’ve come across some pretty interesting paintings, models and photographs in the hallways. They are all part of the company’s extensive art collection. I have not however come across anything as bizarre as the one above.

I first spotted the “llama” painting in the background of the new Microsoft Envisioning video released yesterday titled “Live, Work, Play”. After tweeting about this, Microsoft employee Richard Burte brought to my attention that Windows designer Ilana Smith (of Explorer Ribbon fame) recently shared some photos of other works in the collection, presumably displayed in the Windows building on campus.

Upon more research by Richard, it turns out this all belongs to artist Thom Merrick which dates back to 1999. The author of that blog post quips,

Personally I think art is what people say it is, and I’m perfectly willing to concede that this is art. He gets credit for thinking of it first, if nothing else. Sometimes you look at a work of abstract art and think “I could do that”–but in this case, I know I could do it.

If anyone wants to take a stab at drawing some of their own, feel free to share it here.