24"x36" acrylic on canvas
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The black biomorphic sort of deflated heart shape in the center left with two white oval eyes is a female dreamer, her head silhouetted by her pillow, her upper body outlined vaguely, the two white shapes below the head are her breasts. In the upper left her lover stays up drinking. To the right is a world of dream images featuring a inuit style totem pole with a flying anthropomorphic figure on the top, silhouetted by what could be northern lights and a jumble of spindly trees from the Alaskan wilderness (I grew up in Alaska) but also reads as stained glass. Stylized fish swim towards the totem. Below and two the right a yellow cornucopia shape serves as the body for another fish whose head is being devoured by a sort of disfigured fetus monster. This yellow shape also serves as the body of a flying spirit figure, grinning like a fool. Fins become tiny, probably useless wings. Below the fetus monster are a series of of other fetal images, their various parts outlining a circle like an egg. On the far right a donkey/human monster ejects pink sperm like creatures. Two shadowy figures in the lower right poke their heads from out of the picture frame, as if observing. In the upper right a front of messy clouds are moving in, threatening to scramble the entire picture into pure abstraction, and in the lower left a suggestion of dirt people threaten invade.
Growing up outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, I saw a lot of totem poles. These massive sculpted object generally feature a number of sculpted faces of gods or spirits, anthropomorphic animal heads and such. The ones I remember best had a bird like creature in them, usually at the top, its wide spread wings turning the totem into a cross shape but with a suggestion of flight rather than the christian cross which to me suggests being nailed down to it. Fish are loaded with meaning for me. Salmon and halibut were staple foods while I was growing up. I have memories and pictures of being compared to salmon my father caught in terms of height. One of my proudest moments when I was five years old was catching five rainbow trout in one fishing trip. I remember going on camping trips with my family where the impression I had (it may not have actually been the case) was that if we didn’t catch any fish during the day, we wouldn’t have anything to eat that night. So in these ways fish equal sustenance. In college I developed a serious aquarium keeping hobby. I had a fiery and emotional girlfriend and we set up a 45 gallon aquarium in a public space in our dorm to keep large cichlids in. We had varying degrees of success with that tank, it would often turn green with algae and dead fish were not uncommon. We also had a rather hot and cold relationship and my friends claimed they could tell how my relationship was going by looking at the aquarium. Clean water and healthy fish meant the relationship was going well, dirty water and dead fish meant we were fighting. In this way, fish symbolize mental health.
That relationship ended and later, with another girlfriend, I moved on to keeping saltwater tanks. The girl left but the aquariums have stayed with me. When I have been prosperous enough to buy the things the aquariums need and organized enough to do the regular maintenance they require these tanks have been strikingly beautiful and a point of pride in my life. When I have been poor and unable to buy the things the aquariums need or to busy to take proper care of them their beauty recedes; algae starts to take over, corals bleach and animals die and the aquariums become a reminder of the mess my life has become. In this way, fish symbolize prosperity.
Now, did any of that come through just from looking at the painting? I hope at least a little did. This painting is painted on a 1.5″ deep gallery series canvas and is supplied with a wire for easy hanging. You can have it framed if you like, but you don’t really need to.
this is beautiful. i think it’s the best on this site because it looses the graphic outline-and-color feel of the rest of your work – it is less reminiscent of graphiti and the shapes seem to echo the emotion more purely. (not that graphiti isn’t good and that there shouldn’t be more of it but i think that is is more of an artwork.) i really, really, really like it. if you continute painting this way then i would beware of comparing yourself to other painters who are famous for a similar style – picasso comes to mind, just because his work is so distinctive and the style so recognizable. just keep the work and the style your own. it might be “easy for me to say” because you’ve probably been painting for a while, but that’s just what was running through my head when i looked at it.
on a technical note the contrast and negative space between the figures is amazing. and it’s almost refreshing to see, at the two corners, the dirt people and the cloud coming in, that the style switches to color and a more level “gray area” – like, they aren’t painted contrastingly against the dark background but they are neither sticking out nor camoflauged. they are hard to make sense of, the calamaties in dreams and the calamaties in real life.
one thing i would encourage (the most, besides keep painting forever): keep the figures emotional. i think the strongest figures in the painting, like the sleeping woman or the drunk lover or the rabbit-esque animal in the lower right edge, are the ones that take shape from their emotions. maybe you weren’t intending that but i think the most emotional points and the ones that i looked at the most were the fetuses, the rabbit, the woman, and the lover. keep your figures from being overrun by the simplicity of their shapes – they are not just shapes, they are symbols. if you can effectively juggle keeping your paintings between completely abstract and highly stylized, then the work reaches a whole new level, like i feel this one has.