KURT COBAIN

My portrait of Kurt Cobain, using only a putty knife..
Working without brushes was so much fun, and really freed me off that confinement to detail.

“Riding On the Red Wave of the Civil War”

The Civil War has been on my mind..

The only brush I really use was frustrating me, so I painted the majority of this piece using a BUTTER KNIFE. Revolutionary!

(Of course, a little finger painting is a given with each painting. It’s no fun unless I’m making a mess.)

THE VEIL

The concept for “The Veil” began in a dream in 1995. Everyone in the dream was masked by skin amalgamated veils, creating sub-human, faceless, soulless creatures. The idea never left me, and at the time I didn’t realize why. Upon reflection it summed up a great deal of my life.

One of my earliest memories was in the basement of an old brick church. The fluorescent light flickered across the white stone walls, as we sat at  round table with our Sunday school teacher. “We are bad, we don’t deserve anything, Jesus died for us because we are so bad that we can’t save ourselves”. I watched the skin over her face melting together into one fluent, soft piece, with faint contours where indention’s should be. Sheer fabric seemed to ooze from her skin and affix itself across her face until it was part of her. No one else seemed to be aware of the transformation  before my eyes and she never hesitated speaking.

We grew up engrossed in very strict, Bible believing, Fundamental Baptist churches, where every action was analyzed by a crushingly heavy book of rules. Life was a crash course on how to conceal everything other than what was completely acceptable through man’s view of God. There was no transparency. There were no imperfections.. Only solid, impermeable conformity. In the deepest, most secret parts of my soul I hid myself.  I became like the woman who’s face melted into one fluent, soft piece. No one could see me hidden there, accept for the faint shell of a person that bore no life. Then deep within me hid every evil transgression committed against or by me, until I couldn’t find them anymore.

When I started painting “The Veil”, I began with the intentions to convey something dark and disturbing, like the veiled people in my dreams as a child. What came out was something more hope-filled and beautiful.

When I finished, I was disappointed to find that I’d painted over the subhuman with morphed contours where a face should be. Instead, the veil was pressed closely against a piercing face as the wind was ripping it away. Perhaps in the future I’ll revisit my dream with the intended result, but for now here is what came out. 

PISSANT

 “Pissant” is my depiction of one who is considered insignificant.

It occurred to me how the structure of our concepts of reality, religion, culture, and ourselves is derived from vicarious experience. As we grow, we learn to watch others more closely and study correct behavioral patterns. The reactions of the whole to an individual’s appearance, personality, actions, etc, generates our consensus for what is acceptable or unacceptable for us to become.

Why was I created? What is my purpose? What does my maker believe about me? What is wrong and right? Who should I become? The answers to these kind of earth-shaking questions can absolutely build or destroy a soul. Obviously parents have the most immediate and effective opportunity to manipulate the development of their children’s persona, and introducing religion can have astronomical effects.  Culture plays a huge part in shaping our environment, and in turn shaping us. So, the mold of society chisels away. It can be a brutal, unbearably painful process. Remember those teenage years? Everything you’re not is revealed by those relentlessly defining teenagers around you and the chiseling away continues.

A fully developed schema may continue analyzing others, but they can never add up to the sum of everyone around them. This gives birth to so many negative developments and fractions of one’s character, such as what I’m attempting to portray through “Pissant”. Feelings of worthlessness, jealousy, isolation, rejection, and anger overcome someone who is unable to meet the expectations of what’s acceptable to those around them. A wall of glass wedges between the subject and those around him, until all he can do is peer through at others, living vicariously through them and internalizing his inadequacies.

SCHISM

Give thought to the Minotaur, imprisoned forever within the maddening, endless walls of his Cretian Labryinth. He lives grasping to faint feelings of humanity, but enslaved to the never ending thirst for blood. Loneliness, longing and insanity must plague his soul.

This piece depicts the monster’s humanity, as he gently approaches one of the virgin maidens sent as his sacrifice.

The intended feeling could be terror, love, sensuality, curiosity, longing.. You, the viewer, must decide. As I painted them into being, I imagined the beast being struck by the soft, pale skin of his victim. The smooth, femininity of her voice piercing his heart with pain for the days he’s longed to hear someone speak. This is the beast, tamed by the reflection of humanity that haunts him day and night. The girl trembles beneath him in acceptance of whatever he might do. She knows, she belongs to him.

LAST BREATH

They’re coming. I can feel it. Heavy, dark energy squeezing the breath from me, surrounding and filling every space. Its not time yet. Not before the roaring, screeching sound of it brushing my skin. Electricity and energy thrills me, immobilizing every nerve in my body. It wants to have me.. Something as cold as ice builds inside of my body, gathering, growing, moving upwards and burning all the way. I am free.