Jim Carrey is a really good painter. And I’m not just talking out of my butt here; see for yourself:

This short film is called I Needed Color, and it gives you a brief (about six minute) glimpse into Carrey’s newfound life as a painter. Carrey’s own voiceover details how he began exploring his new art (like so many things in life, it grew out of a romantic disappointment). It got to the point, he says, where there was no room left in his house because everything was paintings. He was even eating on the paintings. (That sounds ... unsanitary.)

I’m not an art critic, but Carrey sure looks talented to me. His paintings are striking; if I saw some of these pieces hanging in a museum without any clue who made them I would stop and look them over for sure. For those who only know Carrey from his comedies, this might seem like a strange outlet for his personal expression, but it’s been very clear for a long time that as brilliantly funny as Carrey is he’s also a thoughtful and intense dude. A lot of the stuff bubbling inside him cannot be expressed by toilet jokes. (Although the things that are expressed by the toilet jokes are quite important and beautiful as well.)

Carrey is far from the only Hollywood actor who’s fallen deeply in love with painting. Johnny Depp does portraits. Anthony Hopkins has played famous artists onscreen, and he has an official site where you can buy his own pieces. And while you might not expect it from the muscle-bound guy who played Rocky and Rambo, Sylvester Stallone has been a prolific painter for years as well. But Carrey’s artwork may be the most surprising (and perhaps the best) of all.

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