Mourning death is never easy, especially when it's a child.
To be painting what I am painting right now is odd, to say the least, but also constructive to my ideas and probably necessary.
I can't just stop what I have been doing just because it hits too close to home. Sometimes making art isn't all butterflies and rainbows. It's work (all of the time), and most of the time, it's brutal.
I have been more or less dealing with "death" in my paintings for awhile now. Not just death in a literal sense, but death and the experience of being a person, of life, living, and trial. Death of ideas, of trust, of relationships- all kinds of death. The figures in my work to me seem to be a metaphor for that human experience. The strange, indirect ways in which I have contorted the "bodies" are the ways in which life sometimes will disfigure us as people. Our experiences more often times than not, will lend themselves to be disfiguring in the mind and in the body, sometimes even in our environment. Of course some of these pictures are more narrative according to my own experiences and there are some that aren't. I think that's why I like to make these images. Who really knows what goes on inside my head or in my life? Who really knows what happens in anyones life? We really don't know the story behind every person we meet, but I can bet that they are similar. The way we deal with them are not. I deal with things on a much different level than most people I know.
In a way, continuing these paintings while mourning the death of someone is confirmation for me. Death is elevating human experience in my pictures even more so now than it was before. Or maybe, it's just me and the way I view my own pictures. Right now, everything seems to be moving in slow motion all of the time. It's like I am taking in every detail and moment on a literal level.
In all sincerity, I won't ever get the answers to all of life's big questions. But at least I can make urgent pictures and raise some of my own big questions, for myself and for others.
To be painting what I am painting right now is odd, to say the least, but also constructive to my ideas and probably necessary.
I can't just stop what I have been doing just because it hits too close to home. Sometimes making art isn't all butterflies and rainbows. It's work (all of the time), and most of the time, it's brutal.
I have been more or less dealing with "death" in my paintings for awhile now. Not just death in a literal sense, but death and the experience of being a person, of life, living, and trial. Death of ideas, of trust, of relationships- all kinds of death. The figures in my work to me seem to be a metaphor for that human experience. The strange, indirect ways in which I have contorted the "bodies" are the ways in which life sometimes will disfigure us as people. Our experiences more often times than not, will lend themselves to be disfiguring in the mind and in the body, sometimes even in our environment. Of course some of these pictures are more narrative according to my own experiences and there are some that aren't. I think that's why I like to make these images. Who really knows what goes on inside my head or in my life? Who really knows what happens in anyones life? We really don't know the story behind every person we meet, but I can bet that they are similar. The way we deal with them are not. I deal with things on a much different level than most people I know.
In a way, continuing these paintings while mourning the death of someone is confirmation for me. Death is elevating human experience in my pictures even more so now than it was before. Or maybe, it's just me and the way I view my own pictures. Right now, everything seems to be moving in slow motion all of the time. It's like I am taking in every detail and moment on a literal level.
In all sincerity, I won't ever get the answers to all of life's big questions. But at least I can make urgent pictures and raise some of my own big questions, for myself and for others.
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