Built a Fort, Set it on Fire

Mixed Media and Collage on Paper

h: 72 x w: 144 in

$2500.00 + Shipping

Contact Me to Purchase

As a teenager I struggled with extremely severe depression. Everyone around me either told told that I was too young to be depressed or treated me in a patronizing manner with flimsy examples within their own lives to try and tell me that they had an inkling of what I was going through. Eventually I had an art teacher who herself had experienced horrific trauma as a child. She was the first person who I felt truly understood that what I was going thru was extremely serious and was neither dismissive nor patronizing in our discussions. Although this period was extremely difficult I look back on it fondly now, because I know it was me beginning to exit the heavy fog of depression that had defined so much of my youth. This painting is inspired by that sensation of pain and pleasure, sadness and joy that those memories evoke within me.

In Grass (Green): Draft of Proposal for Historic Lancaster Amtrack Station Mural

This is an early draft of a proposal I might submit for a public art project in Lancaster County, PA. The project calls for a work of public art that melds visual art with poetry in a unique way. Given my propensity for text based work I found the idea extremely appealing.

Built a Fort, Set it on Fire: a work in process pt 2

Built a Fort, Set it on Fire: a work in process pt 1

a Few of My Favourite Things: No Country For Old Men

In this edition of a Few of My Favourite Things I would like to discuss a recent film. Film as a medium can do things that a painting or sculpture can never do, beyond the fact that films traditional use of narrative inherently includes the viewer in the action in a way that painting cannot ever truly accomplish; however, even films with less traditional or no narrative structure still can grab the viewer by using things like time to heighten the tension or amplify the catharsis. Take for example, the recent Coen Brothers film, No Country For Old Men. Just like the Cormack McCarthy book that it is based on the film is an allegory. One is not meant to take the events presented as real and actual. There is in actuality no Anton Chigurh, No Llewelyn Moss; likewise there is no money or drugs or cross state murder spree. Anton is not a man and Llewelyn is all young men. Young men, with their arrogance and bravado, men who still think they can work the system in their favour. Men who haven’t realized that we are but a grain of sand in all of the Sahara desert. Men who this world still has a use for because they are the fuel that feeds the beast of nature. And Anton, Anton is the beast’s messenger. Throughout the film Anton flips a coin to allow his victims to feel they have some say in their fate. This represents God’s gift to man of free will. As the film sees it, God gave us free will only to abdicate the guilt that is at the root of His ambivalence. The film is the fever dream of Sheriff Bell, a man at the end of the primordial journey who has for his entire life walked a straight line and played by the rules and has stepped over the corpses of failed hustlers who thought they had all the angles accounted for and who now has found the prize for all this hard work. The prize of course is the same one all the bagmen and grease men found waiting for them. For you can’t fight the beast, we all meet our fate and grace of god or not, we all end up six feet under. I could watch this film everyday until I have no days left and still marvel at how perfect it is. No shot is superfluous, every frame is captured the only way it could be. Like a Rembrandt or a Rothko this film is the work of master craftsmen at their peak. Their confidence in their ability to tell this story is what allows them to avoid so many of the pitfalls that beleaguer even the greatest of filmmakers. It is so easy to get cocky and throw in shots just because you can or get sheepish and cut something amazing because you aren’t sure but the best artists exist in that perfect middle where confidence and humility dance. Take the scene where Anton mends his wounds after his encounter with Llewelyn outside the hotel. The Coens treat this scene with an objective tenderness that belies the carnage that Anton has wreaked. We feel as if we are watching an animal lick it’s wounds, in that moment we don’t see Anton as a beast but instead as a force of nature playing it’s part in a grand awful tragedy. In that moment the Coens give us a quiet glimpse of the beauty that is the mess of life. Yes, people suffer and yes, the bad guy often wins and we don’t control our fate but at the same time these shackles also free us. We are not perfect, we do not control our destiny; but like being strapped to the back of a wild horse traveling at breakneck speed down a gorge to certain death this ride called life can be a wild and amazing trip if you understand the rules that the universe abides by. The Coen brothers give us a glimpse of the beauty amidst all the pain. And oh, the beauty; this is one of the most beautifully photographed films that has ever been made. They show us the awe and wonder of nature and how small we humans are in comparison. This film is a travelogue for the human condition and it capture the quiet beauty amidst all the savage pain.

Tate: MODERN Design Submission

The Tate Modern in London is holding a competition to design a product that will be sold in their gift shop. This is my submission, it is a print that illustrates the essence of modern art as I see it; Form, Shape, Line & Colour.

a Few of My Favourite Things 1/10/2010

I know it has been quite a while since I updated A Few of My Favourite Things here so I will skip with the pleasantries and just get right into it.

The subject for this edition of A Few of My Favourite Things is the contemporary artist and draftswoman, Aurel Schmidt. Aurel’s work belongs in the recent resurgence of drawing. Her work is also a kin of the recent rise of what could best be described as obsessive / ritualistic work. Wherein the artist uses repetition be it of formal elements or technical processes to a degree that borders on obsessive and ritualistic. These artists can be considered the offspring of artists such as Yayoi Kusama and although their work often borrows Ms Kusama’s obsessive tendencies it rarely shares her formal limitations. Instead the work of Ms Schmidt cribs everything from pop culture to pseudo-religious imagery and the reference lays in the technical as opposed aesthetic approach that Ms Schmidt takes to her very labored over drawings. Another reference point for Ms Schmidt is the work of outsider artists like Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez. Like both Mr.’s Darger and Ramirez Ms Schmidt’s work often has as it’s subject matter imagery that can be described as bizarre and surreal however unlike both Mr. Darger and Mr. Ramirez who both struggled with mental health issues that often plagued the consistency of their work Ms Schmidt’s work has been prolific and consistently rewarding. Her work in many ways reminds me of the work of someone like the early renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch in its fixation upon the disturbing and the grotesque. There is something truly wonderful about how she so precisely crafts these technically complex "cabinets of oddities". The loving attention paid to every last detail of such seemingly disturbing drawings elevates the subject matter above it’s pulpy and gruesome origins into some sort of thing akin to beauty and maybe even truth. As if by paying it some much heed Ms Schmidt begs the question, “Why not?”