By Skye Gurney and D.W. Pine
April 12, 2018
The April 23 TIME cover, depicting the growing chaos within the Trump White House, may look familiar to some readers: We asked longtime TIME collaborator Tim O’Brien to reimagine a cover he did for us just over a year ago.? With his inventive style and fine hairline brush, Tim’s updated piece shows the rising water from the storms swirling inside the Oval Office.
“When I painted the ‘Nothing to See Here’ cover art, like many, I assumed the level of chaos could not last, that patriots on both sides of the aisle would step forward to control much of what transpired in the past year,” says O’Brien, a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has appeared on over two dozen TIME covers since 1989, covering subjects ranging from the Catholic church to Osama Bin Laden.
“As the never-ending flood of breaking news washed over the White House, and the firings, the scandals and the general mayhem filled each news cycle, I felt the storm metaphor was as relevant as ever,” says O’Brien, who used air brush, pencil, gouache and oil paint to create the piece.” “I mostly thought about how water would fill the space, how it would be transparent in some areas and reflective in others.”
 

Click below for an animation created by TIME of the new cover art...
 
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Time Cover discussion on CNN