Slap Me in the Face.

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. 

-Fredrico Fellini

Fixation.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  For the first time, last week I could not bring myself to respect the work of someone prominent in the world of art. Or rather, was stunned at the fact that, whether distasteful, shocking or not, the work of this well known individual (whom I choose not to name as the foundation to his success is infamy) is widely considered to have artistic merit, if only to raise the question of what art really is.
  Truthfully, it wasn't the work itself that shocked me most, it was my reflection on my initial reaction to his work that came as a bigger surprise. Up until last week, I had been able to respect anything essentially artistic, even in a minute way. Without fail, I could find something worth my attention in a piece out of respect to the individual that, however mundane, had created something in his or her own image. But the work I was asked to look at and react to was pointlessly violent. It was created without satisfactory justification to the death it inflicted. So I painted about it without really thinking.
  I guess I've begun to welcome intuitive acts back into my work. The people in this studio have helped me unknowingly with that. For the first two years of my education in design, I had been taught to think, and not feel. I strove to make images that advertised my intelligence instead of my intuition. But most images are looked at intuitively by the viewer, so something created intuitively is like a reciprocal high five. No one wants to high five a formal handshake. A successful image should sting your face in a way that seems like masochism.