According to Mellencamp, “German painting remains the basic foundation for what I do, same as folk music is the foundation of my songs. Discovering Beckmann to me was like discovering Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan.” Mellencamp’s paintings have been the subject of a number of exhibitions—Nothing Like I Planned at the Tennessee State Museum in 2012, and The Paintings of John Mellencamp at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, in 2013, and currently at the Museum of Art—DeLand, Florida. American Dreams: Paintings by John Mellencamp—fifty oil and mixed-media paintings, included several that have never been seen by the public—was at the Morris Museum from January 11 through April 12, 2015.