Pendulum Painter Has Brush with History in Setting Guinness Mark

Ever since becoming a successful artist, Cole Newman BA'22 has had big dreams. A pendulum painter, The University of Texas at Dallas alum had his sights set on creating the largest drip painting recognized by the Guinness World Records by 2026. He accomplished that feat this spring.

"It's the world's largest dripping pendulum painting," said Newman, who spent two months coordinating the logistics for the record-breaking attempt. "It was unbelievably difficult to put together, and so many things went wrong, but it finally worked. It was fantastic."

Newman and a team of 30, many of whom were UTD students and alumni, took two days to prepare a 22,500-square-foot canvas that had a construction crane towering over it and holding a 110-gallon drum filled with 1,100 pounds of white paint in a parking lot at Fair Park in Dallas.

Newman partnered with Microsoft Corp., which sponsored his record-breaking attempt in exchange for a TikTok video promoting his work and the release of a new Microsoft laptop. The company paid an estimated $109,000 to stage the event on May 18.

"I've been dreaming about doing this for years, and for it to actually come to fruition is just unbelievable," he said.

Newman discovered pendulum painting while a student at UT Dallas. He found online videos of an artist making paintings using suspended cans of paint with holes at the bottom in order to drizzle the paint over a canvas.

Newman's mother discovered his abilities after he and a friend turned Newman's UT Dallas apartment into a temporary studio in order to create their first pendulum painting using a red Solo cup with a hole in the bottom filled with acrylic house paint. Newman displayed the finished piece in his apartment but didn't give it much thought until his mother saw it.

"My mom immediately wanted one for our living room in Austin," Newman said. "She went out and bought canvas and told me to do whatever I wanted. During a visit home, I put trash bags down all over our garage and used a coffee can with a hole in it and let it fly. My mom recorded it, and we posted it to Instagram."

A friend of Newman's saw the Instagram post and suggested he post it on TikTok.

"I posted it, and it got like half a million views and like 5,000 followers, which I now know is really nothing," Newman said. "But at the time, it was like the coolest thing ever."

With that TikTok post, Newman's career as an artist and social media influencer was launched.

"That was the light bulb moment for me - when I realized I could make a living creating content," he said. "It lit a fire under me, and I started posting four or five videos a day of my paintings."

Not long after graduating from UTD with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, Newman was working full time as an artist, selling his pendulum paintings through his website ColesColor. He estimates he has done videos of more than 800 paintings, and his social media numbers have only grown with each new post. His YouTube channel, ColesColor, has more than 1 million subscribers.

On the day of the record-breaking attempt, the crane operator swung the barrel spewing a stream of paint repeatedly across the canvas in arching swirls much like Newman's more modest-sized pendulum paintings. After several passes the painting was complete, and an official with Guinness World Records measured the canvas and declared the painting a world record.

"It was a very cool feeling," Newman said. "The Guinness [representative] presented us with a world record plaque on-site, which was amazing."

Newman achieved the record just three weeks after he and his wife, Avery, were married.

"It's been an incredible time for a guy who just likes to have fun making swirly paintings," he said.