Val Kilmer, the actor who died at 65 this week, was known widely for his star-making experiences in films such as Top Gun and The Doors. But beyond having a significant screen presence, Kilmer was also an artist, maintaining a painting practice that he considered an important part of his work.
Kilmer’s big breakthrough as an artist came in 2017, when New York’s Woodward Gallery gave him a solo show. Titled “Valholla” (a reference, a release explained, both to Valhalla, a fixture of Norse mythology, and to Kilmer’s Norse ancestry), the show featured abstract paintings, with splashes of colorful enamel laid on metal sheets.
It wasn’t Kilmer’s first gallery show—Yoko Ono helped him get an exhibition in Tokyo during the 2000s—but it was the one that gained the attention of the Guardian, Artnet News, and W, among other mainstream outlets.
“Val Kilmer was not just a talented actor and author, but also a deeply passionate artist whose creativity extended far beyond the screen,” Woodward Gallery wrote on Instagram. “His work as a visual artist showcased his unique vision and boundless imagination.”
He had turned increasingly to art while undergoing cancer treatment, he told W. His practice, he said, was modeled on those of Ono, Frida Kahlo, Urs Fischer, Johannes Vermeer, and Cy Twombly. When W asked if his art sold, he said, “Yes. Yes. Hell yes,” adding that Bob Dylan had previously bought one of his paintings.
In the Guardian profile of the show, Kilmer said that he had been inclined toward art ever since he was a kid, when he observed his brother painting. “My little brother was a legitimate genius and he was born with a paintbrush in his hand—it poured out of him at a high level —so I was exposed to a very unusual vision of how ‘easy’ it is to make things that are beautiful,” Kilmer said. He added: “If I’m not creating, I start to die a little.”
There were cases where his art dovetailed with his movies. He painted Doc Holliday, the gunfighter he memorably played in 1993’s Tombstone, and he also represented Batman, whom he brought to life in 1995’s Batman Forever. (And in a different way, in the 2000 film Pollock, Kilmer performed as Willem de Kooning opposite Ed Harris, who received an Oscar nomination for playing the titular Abstract Expressionist.)
Kilmer’s art career did not always gain him positive media attention. In 2019, sculptor Bale Creek Allen sued Kilmer, claiming that he stole his idea for a sculpture of a tumbleweed. Kilmer crafted a similar sculpture as Allen from 22 karat gold. He denied taking Allen’s concept.
It was readily apparent that Kilmer’s art was deeply important to him. Appropriately, his last Instagram post included an image of an abstract painting. “It’s got that late-night glow,” he wrote of the work. “Cool tones with a low burn, like when the camp fire cools down but you’re still wide awake.”