This is the first thing I ever painted since leaving elementary school. I mimicked what I could from watching Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting with my mother when I was very young. Much of my early work is signed with a name I no longer use, a transitionary period in my life where I was trying on new things. Some of those new things are art styles.
The very same day, I made this. I used to love watching the streetside spraycan hustlers making planetscapes out of cookware and newspaper. I tried my hand at something similar here using the limited skills I had.
Soon after I tasted abstract impressionism. I like this piece. I love the dirt, made from all the other colors I used. Much like real dirt, made from the leftovers of a beautiful world, forgotten and left to become the base of a new world.
I’ve grown to hate this one over the years, but all my friends love it. They say it’s the most “Me” among my art. I used to love watching Dimitri Martin standup acts, I think prop comedy is amazing but it has to be subtle. Paying heed to that and giving love to abstract absurdism, I took things a bit too far and landed somewhere between the null-void and cubism.
This one was fun. I’d never painted in negative before. It doesn’t represent anything but whimsy. I actually painted this one at a particularly sad time in my life, I wonder if that’s visible here. Oh to be a viewer of my art without the context of my life, what tapestry it might weave to someone else.
Following the theme of paintings from sad times. Alone for the first time in my life, I decided to take a chaotic approach to finding peace. Do everything wrong, and build from the pieces. I made this piece with a “brush” made of wadded aluminum foil, a blow dryer, a glue stick, loose leaf paper, and some rubbing alcohol. Oh and paint.
It was around this time I realized all I needed was permission. For what? I couldn’t tell yet. From who? Myself, silly 🙂
Have you ever made a piece of trash? Have you ever made trash on purpose and accidentally fallen in love with it? This punk little pixie is my reminder every day that sometimes, if you need to fuck things up, you need to bring your own storm. Things are too prim and proper in this world, make some noise, dye your wings, wear fishnets in the rain. Most importantly though, she has a message for everyone:
Make Bad Art
This is the first thing I made after giving myself permission to make bad art. After giving myself permission to make impermissably terrible wastes of paper and canvas.
Then I decided:
Hey, as long as I’m wasting paper I should play around with my signature. So I scrawled it out really big and went to town on it.
Have you ever had a conversation with a gold emblasoned professor of mycology? You should. They might have something to say.
This is by far my favorite piece. It technically doesn’t belong on this page because it’s neither paint nor ink but I digress. Within us, there are multitudes. Under the right conditions they split. Under various lighting conditions there are three separate but similar self portraits contained in this image.
This is it for now. I have some more art, but I don’t want to share it all right now. Check back later for more. All of the art on this page is CC BY-NC-SA, this means you don’t need my permission to use it if you’re not a corporate entity, but you have to attribute credit back to me.
Please, leave a comment if you have thoughts, I only ask that you are respectful, all feedback is good feedback except for mean feedback. If you choose to leave a comment, I collect the information you leave for abuse prevention only. I don’t sell your data, and I wouldn’t even if I knew how 🙂
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