How Have I Offended Thee? Let me count the ways?

Poppies

Inkjet print, 2011

 

 

 



 

Three Eyes

Inkjet print, 2011

 

 

How have I Offended Thee?

Let Me Count the Ways

 

OMG!  My art is offensive!  OMG!  Offensive, tacky, scary and embarrassing.  Incomprehensive, seemingly pointless.  It goes beyond the boundaries of good taste.  People are frightened.  My family is embarrassed. They are afraid that their friends will find out about me.  I have heard thinly veiled suggestions regarding medication.  There are some twists in my artistic path that are shocking.  Frightening!  It seems that I have not only offended the Christians;  New Agers and atheist also beg to differ. Dog lovers, dog haters and compulsive shoppers are avoiding me.

 Everyone else is just laughing.  Laughing at me or with me?

I am so sorry.  I apologize if I have offended you.  No offense was intended.  May I offer an explanation?  I have art brain.  This is a poorly documented anomaly of human neuroanatomy.  It is a disease, recognized by very few doctors.  Symptoms include lack of boundaries and an ineffective inner brain editor which leads to inappropriate behavior.  Please pardon me, the devil made me do it.

Actually, my Muse made me do it.  If I don't follow her she pouts and goes away.  She requires free range.  Without her, I get artist block.  Without her, yes, I could paint and write, but it would be boring.
 

Oh, Yea!  Take a look.  Beware, art may scramble your brain.  And you may not like that, because it makes you think.  It is a challenge.  It may shock you out of the doldrums. Shake up complacency.



************************************************************************************
 

 Office of Reason and Good Sense
333 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC

                                                                                                                                        

Dear Janet, 

There are some things that we need to discuss.  I am trying to help you to be successful, I am taking my valuable time to speak to you for your own good. 
 

First of all, a little alliteration is nice, but too much repetition is just annoying.  Hyperbole has its place, but please, do tone the exaggeration down.  And irony?  Irony is tricky,  some people don't get it when you write the opposite of you intend to communicate.   So, please refrain from irony.  Are you actually aiming to convince people that you are crazy? Or, is that just an accidental effect?

 

Throw "cute" in the trash.  How do you expect people to take you seriously when your so called "work" is just too cute?

 

Most Important!  For Gods sake, stay away from religion and spirituality.  No one really cares and you don't know what you are talking about. 
 

 Don't you remember?  Two gallery curators, the people that can help you exhibit your work, have rejected your pictures because of the twisted religious aspects.  Are you listening?   If you want to be recognized as an artist, then you need to have broad appeal.  They told you, two influential taste makers told you,  "We like the pop art, but not the religious pictures."

You are doing it all wrong!

 

Stick to light and fluffy.  You can make "nice pictures",  people want to be reassured.

You must be consistent, find a pretty style and stick to it. No one knows what to expect from you.  Changing styles every few years doesn't work.

 

I know, you are confused.  Is that your tag line now?  Listen up.   Being confused is not a good way to brand yourself.   Don't embarrass your self.

 

I don't want to tell you these things again.  You are bright.  Listen up.  The annual evaluation is coming up.  So study the guidelines, and follow the rules.

 

Sincerely yours,

The Voice of Reason

 

 

 ***********************************************************************************
 

Lets Paint

Conspiracy of the Gods

 

I am working on a picture and story of Prometheus, Bringer of Fire. Prometheus is an ancient Greek Celebrity.   The working title is,  Conspiracy of the Gods, "Prometheus Tells All". 

 

Red Hot News!  See the exclusive Natural Inquirer interview with Prometheus,  The Bringer of Light.  The WakiLeaks whistle blower will explain the devious behavior of the Gods.  He exposes the ancient conspiracy to keep fire from humankind.
 

 

         

How Have I Offended Thee

part two

 

 

That writing that I did, the "Lets Gossip Barbie", was over the top.  It offended Christians, New Agers, and the complacent majority with it's subversive insinuations.  There was a lot of silly sex.  But I think that the most material that caused the most offense, had to do with compulsive shopping, which, along with dissing dogs, maybe a TABOO subject. 
  

ART is a vast planet, with rivers and mountains and forests, there are mysterious, unexplored regions.

 

I invite you to journey with me off of the map.  I want to help you open your mind, help you be the driver of your own life.  I want to scramble your preconceived notions.  Question the architecture of your belief system.  Don't forget to pack your sense of humor.

My work uses surrealistic art references to access the unconscious.  The unconscious parts of our brain have a huge influence on our behavior.  Perhaps, by making the irrational visible, we may come to know ourselves better.  If your brain is scrambled, maybe you will put it back together, maybe, you will reevaluate your thought processes, and be better than ever.  

Oh, yea!  I hope that it upsets your programing.  Believe it or not, you have been programmed.  All that stuff that school taught you?  Much of it is just crap, wrong.  Did you go to church?  You are really programmed.

 You have watched a hundred jillion advertisements, all intended to make you feel inadequate, an inadequacy that only expensive products can allegedly soothe.  All intending to program you into being a good little consumer. 

You have been molded into a cog for the consumer culture, a huge machine that makes stockholders rich.  And, puts you in debt so that you are slaved to a shit job.  Think about it, darling.

(I do recognize some boundaries, for instance I will not urinate on religious icons, like the most successful living artist of the day did. Damien Hirst used shock tactics to jump start his career.  I may be irreverent, but I do not want to be seriously inconsiderate to the people who have found some comfort in religion.)

12/9/13  
I was reading over this blog today and recognized a mistake.  Damien Hirst did not make the "Piss Jesus" art work, Andres Serrano made it in 1987.  Damien Hirst floated a dissected baby calf and a zebra in formaldehyde.  The similar offenses here are the source of my mistake.
 

 

In these words and pictures, that I post online, I most sincerely hope to communicate from my consciousness to your consciousness. Bypass the rational and communicate directly brain to brain. I color out of the lines of social constrictions to irreverently and subversively, challenge you to think for yourself.

 

OK, well, that is an overly ambitious goal.  Maybe, this is just a bunch of bull shit that I have made up to entertain myself. Whatever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo

 

Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo

digital painting, print, 8/2013

 

 

 

Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo, these words kept chanting in my mind, replacing the CEO approved mantra that I intended to chant.  So, I made a picture of this silly trio.

 

POP Religion

The POP Religion show that was scheduled for 9/14/13, has been postponed.  We are working on a new date and venue.  I am disappointed to postpone the show, but good things are in the works.

 

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Last week we had a wonderful family beach vacation at Gulf Shores.  Much of the peninsula is protected park reserve, so we saw a lot of wild life.

 

Here is the wildlife sighting list:

 

Eagle! Perched high in a pine tree, then it flew away on mighty wings.

pelicans, blue herons, comic sand pipers, humming birds, gulls

dolphins

shark

one sting ray and two manta rays with six foot span

jelly fish

etc. , so forth and so on

rich nature

 

 

 

I have been so lucky to vacation at Gulf Shores since I was a kid and my uncle had a cabin there. 

 

Returning there at intervals has been a high light of my life.  I still play in the surf. 

 

 

A memory cherished.  I, the child, immersed in the boundless water, rocked by the surf.  Joy, nerve tingling joy, leaping in the ocean,  playing with my sisters and cousins. Sun so bright, bathed in light.  Enlightenment.

 

Also, I distinctly remember, the seventh and most powerful waves.  I, the child me, tumbled tail over head, in the turbulence.  Legs scraped by the sand.  Beach pizza legs.

 

Sleeping, big family snoring, windows open, in the surf song night.  The child tossing, sleep disturbed by sunburn lacerated with sand.  Misery.

 

Next morning, return to the rocking waters, joy, ecstasy, outweighing misery.

 

 

 

This last week they, the family, told me not to swim in the Gulf.  "Beware of sharks, stingrays and jellyfish!"  Sandy sunburn did not stop me then, these sea dwelling creatures will not keep me away now.

 

My mature adult sensitivities are different than childish nirvana.  But, floating and swimming in the waves,  I get a small taste, a faded reminder, of how it felt to be young and holistically immersed in a peak experience. 

 

 

The last day Dave and I walked the western tip of the Gulf Shores peninsula. Where the Mobile Bay and the Gulf meet. Waters there form a rich ecological zone, where currents collide and churn the water.  We dodged blobs of stranded jelly fish on the shore. 

 

That west tip must be the best shore fishing spot around, because fisher people were there with colorful day camp carts, coolers, striped umbrellas, cell phones, lines and bait.  We chatted with the fishers,  "You catch anything?" they were delighted to show the creatures that they caught.  A twenty five pound black drum;  a shark, small, about a three footer;  and a stingray, beached by a line, the fisher extracting the hook from it's strange mouth with plyers. 

 

Hmmm, all those nasty creatures are there at the western point.  In a short walk we saw all the biting, stinging life that THEY warned me about.  I will not swim there, but a bit east on the Gulf where it should be OK??