VESTIGES....THE SHOW.

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Too many leaves.

"If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion."

-Ashleigh Brilliant

Bug Collection.
Acrylic on Masonite 19x22"

  After some experimentation with the memories of strangers, for my final few pieces in this body of work, I've decided to return to more familiar things. In the midst of all the paranormal excitement I found in the antique photos from the market near Sant Ambrogio, it completely slipped my mind that during my stay in Ireland, I was given a few antique photos of my own family.
  In the small stack of black and whites my father's sister gave me was an image I had never seen before this reunion; my father as a boy. His past has always been something of a mystery for us growing up, or maybe the little stories never trickled down the sibling ladder to reach me at the bottom. Either way, any childhood story about the man has always been a new one for me.
  I suppose the photo I was given gave me the opportunity to explore my perception of his experiences in a new way. Many of the conversations I've had with my father have been about his or another's journey into sobriety. This part of him is one of the only parts I know well. He has devoted most of his life to helping himself and others through the metamorphic change required to give up a substance, which is why I think he has such an affection for butterflies. 

If Only a Nightmare.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.

-Marsha Norman

It Whispers.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  Frequently around the studio I see polite inquisitions into how one of the artists' night went answered in a desperate tone leaking out of a defeated face with red, glazed eyes. Insomnia is an Artistically Transmitted Infection (ATI) easily contracted in a place where creative juices flow freely.

  Trying to fall asleep is often a futile activity for those that consciously tap into their sub-conscious each day. The main reason most artists sleep in most of the morning is because most of the night is spent with their eyes open in darkness, and then lamplight over a sketchbook, then back to darkness; rinsing and repeating, thinking and depositing.

  The problem I think may lie in the fact that when most people begin to visualize the impossible, their bodies surrender to fantasy for a rationed eight or so hours. But when any type of creative begins to see those familiar, intertwining, translucent blobs of colour, their body kick-starts and the cycle begins again. See, it's very hard to tell someone they're sleeping if they spend most of their day living in fantasy.

  But that moment when reality and dream cross over is always the ripest for harvesting inspiration. The only difficulty is that it is usually too late to get back to work (although you could argue it's never too late). Which is what I considered at 5am this morning, waiting to slip away. But I pulled through, slept on it and made a piece about those soft spoken moments before a dream.

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.  

Channel Changer.

"The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is."

-Arnold Bennett

Ghost on a Screen.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  About a week ago, the piece I was working on stopped going my way. My brushes just weren't cooperating, no matter how strict I was with them, so I banished the painting to the dark side of my studio and walked home anxious and frustrated. 

  The best remedy, I knew, was to start a new piece and return to the disobedient one later. So early the next day I went hunting in the antique market near chiesa di Sant Ambrogio for some old photos to paint from. But Instead of finding motivation, all I found was a feeling of shame. Looking through the personal moments of someone I had never met, with the intention to make them my own, felt surprisingly perverse. I honestly thought I would find inspiration at the expense of the aesthetic oddities people in the past seem to hold for us, but the thought of painting a stranger's wedding portrait seemed like really bad karma. Still, I didn't want to leave empty handed and consider the trip a failure, so I purchased four small, black and white portraits to study respectfully.

  Now, I don't want to claim that one of them is haunted, but it totally is (although maybe in a good way). After scanning the four photos onto my computer, I threw one on a flash drive and took it to the print shop around the corner to get it blown up to paint from (I hope the lady there has gathered by now that I might be a painter in view of the absurd things I have her print for me on a regular basis). My intention was simply to paint this centred portrait of a young man as it was, maybe with a bit of colour, as a break for my mind from the piece I was working on before. Only, something beyond my control hated that idea and took my successfully copied image and split it in three, offering an adequate alternative to the redundancy in a painting of a centred face. Two things had me accept this eerie change: 

1. I was out of money.

2. It seemed like something knew what it was doing.

  So I painted it as it was, in spite of its hauntedness and the apparent discomfort of my studio mate. Something had reminded me that these "accidents" are important in making art that feels honest; art that isn't over thought. Art that is plainly a reaction to the illogical shit that happens in a lifetime.