Dancer

I found a couture fashion photo and redid it as a quasi-Fauvist clubber. Despite my interest in outdoor activities, horror movies, and books, I actually rather like the whole high fashion aesthetic. Pastel on paper.  

Cracked

For the same class that I did all the other portraits for. I decided to make a change from the monochromatic, quiet pictures, and do myself as Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction.

Tea Portrait

I painted myself in tea and crushed graphite on paper. I think it expresses me well, because it’s sort of a quite picture and it involves tea. I always saw this as kind of a comfortable picture, but most people see it as creepy. It may be telling, I suppose.

Scream

I adore horror films. I also scare easily. It completely eludes me as to why anyone would want to watch horror films if they weren’t terrifying. I’m willing to suspend belief and be scared by even old, corny, silly, and dated horror movies, but the best ones just delight me so much. The scream of Psycho is one of the most iconic horror images, right up there with Dracula in his cape, the unmasking of The Phantom of the Opera, Jessica Harper holding the class plumage while an undead schoolmate comes for her (Suspiria), Rosemary screaming, “You Maniacs!”, Diamien’s smile, Asami with her needles (Audition)… I could keep going, and I’d like to make a series using different monochromatic schemes.

Dream Toad

The project for this was to create an imaginary creature in a creative space. I created a toad with hands (mostly because toads are darling and The Cat with Hands is one of the best short films of all time). It also has owl wings. Owls are my favorite animal, not for any symbolic reason, but because owls are utterly delightful in every way.

The space is made of tea, painted like a forest, and through the forest are various quotes from literature, poetry, pop culture, and even the alphabet. I wanted it to be like the echoes of words in an unreal wood. In fairytales, the heroes have to go through the woods to find the treasure, defeat the monster, or find true love. I’d like to think my toad can facilitate this in some way, but I’m sure he asks all kinds of riddles and speaks on code, and so would be a very bothersome kind of fairy guide.

Uzumaki

I did this for a class. I didn’t have the title until I remembered a Japanese film called Uzumaki, which means “spiral”. For anyone who has seen the film, I’m sure it creates a new connotation as to where my mind usually goes. For everyone else… No, actually, there is no one else. Go rent the film if you haven’t seen it yet. Acrylic on paper.

Landscape

Acryloc on Canvas
I think it may be a cave.

Ted in Egg Land

Ted is a dot, some sort of single-cell organism who has a series of adventures. In this particular adventure, he’s encountered the celestial eggs, which seem to be judging him. It’s not related to my usual aesthetic pursuit, but more of an indulgence in my somewhat deranged sense of humor.

Sally

This is a creepy self-portrait I did for class. She’s my alter-ego Sally, my ID, through which I channel a lot of my more morbid concepts. My imagination has always been a little on the eerie end of things. I’m a big horror film fan. Charcoal on paper.

Bright Womyn

I wanted something similar to the Wild Womyn piece. In this one, however, it’s a peaceful face full of unpredictable color and energy. I was thinking of dreams and thoughts, firing behind a placid exterior. Pastel on paper cut-out.

Wild Womyn

Here I was thinking of pictures of tigers, coming out of the jungle foliage. Angela Carter has a story in her Bloody Chamber collection, in which she addresses the subject of “second sex” and the writings of some thinkers who claimed women were not made in the image of God. The logical conclusion of the story is that the women join the beasts in wild otherness. I’m not sure that it’s so much an exile or a removal from the image of God that would make a person want to turn to the wilds, though –for either gender. For me, there’s something good, mysterious, exciting in the wilds of nature. I wanted to make the face coming out of some sort of darkness, something chaotic, but remaining strong and wild despite everything.

Blue

One of my major interests in art is color theory. Perhaps this is because I am interested in science and philosophy, and the two are combined in the physical chemistry and psychology of color, and the philosophical necessities of color. For me, one of the most rich, meaningful, and mysterious colors is blue –like the ocean, like the sky. We live on a blue planet, in a solar system of planets totally unlike ours. Blue has been meaningful for religions (it’s the color of the Virgin Mary in Catholic traditions, for example), politics (red, white, blue, blue states), gender relations, classifications, even feelings of temperature. I had originally intended to paint something other than this, but I had been studying Rothko and other similar artists and I had recently been confronted by a conservative English major who announced that all minimalist art was both ugly and satanic. I started to think: isn’t there color in nature? Isn’t the sky often a minimalist painting of sorts? What could be ugly or evil about a beautiful color? I really liked the final result of the painting and I thought: “There is nothing I could possibly do to this that would make the blue any better than it already is.”

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Twist)

There was an online contest for literary crossovers. I did Leroux and Pirandello, because that makes pretty much no sense at all. I think I got a few chuckles out of it, though. Digital sketch.

Gothic Valentine

Digital. Mildly Leroux-related sketch.  I’ve always loved dark melodrama, and so this was a fun, quick sketch for me to indulge my gothic side.

Shadow Queen

Colored pencil on paper.

This is a drawing I did from the Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean film, Mirrormask.

Frozen Missouri

A story: After I moved from Oregon the last time (to Ohio), I found it almost impossible to appreciate any kind of beauty outside of my jagged-mountains, crashing-ocean, evergreen-trees, always-raining home. I was not living in the most beautiful place in the world at the time. Actually, I was living in one of the ugliest places I have ever been. However, I was also living in the hills of Appalachia, near Amish country, near rural Ohio. Even seeing lovely forests and hills could not make me appreciate them as beautiful. I saw any landscape East of Colorado as tame and boring, because if it can’t likely kill you with its beauty then what’s the point? But, when on one of my frequent (daily) visits to the public library, I found a birdwatcher’s memoir called Out of the Woods by Ora E. Anderson. People talk about books that changed their lives because the book was inspiring, or helpful, or gave the person the courage to do the right thing –clichés like that. This book was not about grapping the stars and wearing a blue bird of hope, perched jauntily on the side of a sunhat. I didn’t feel as if I could “be anything/do anything”. But, in a way, it did change my life. The book is a very gentle memoir of an eighty-year-old naturalist. He is observant, and I would say, in fact, wise. He can really see the beauty in the world, and has the wonder of a child and the knowledge of his age. He’s the sort of person I would want to be instructed by. As it happens, he lived in Appalachia. I don’t think my life was changed in that I could suddenly touch the moon. But, I wanted to see the world in this way and not simply sit around in my teenaged angst, listening to Goth music and feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t go to the beach. His observations really broke me out of my inability to appreciate the variety of beauty.

Out of the Woods is still one of my favorite books, and I suggest it.

I am now living in Kansas, and I can honestly say that, like Oregon or Appalachia, it has many beautiful places. I still miss Oregon, but I don’t hate Kansas for this. This painting I did after a snow, while overlooking the Missouri River. I only had a few tubes of paint, one brush, and I painted it with melted snow and much shivering. I wanted to capture all the unusual colors of an icy day overlooking the river.

Acrylic and snow on paper.

Unreal City and Girl, Dream of Gold Bird and Beasts

This is probably another I will re-shoot, and possible continue to work on. I’m experiencing some technical difficulties. Once again, the colors are richer in real life, and I feel many of the details have been flattened.

This one was very much a free exercise in images, colors, and forms that I find symbolic or important to me in some way. I wanted to paint something that related to my feelings of wanderlust and being trapped in by a society that I feel is less real than even dreams of the outdoors. Part of the title is from my favorite poem, but I won’t tell you what it is or which part.

Acrylic on canvas.

Mountains in the Morning

Unfortunately, I have had some problems with photographing this painting. The colors are much more vibrant in real life. However, I am not sure that this is really the finished project, so out of the shots I did recently it turned out the best. We’ll see if I make changes later.

The painting is supposed to be the feel of mountains and forests on a misty, early morning. I tried to capture the hazy, unreal feeling of seeing this. Because I am from Oregon, I am very much inspired by these jagged landscapes and pointed evergreen trees. Even though I do not live in the North West now, I feel that the landscape is a part of my memory and forms what I think about the earth and our relationship to it.

Acrylic on canvas.

Fish

Charcoal and pastels on paper.

Once again, another fish piece. This was an expressive or “emotional” work, an introspective exercise working on what exactly the symbols really mean to me. These round, nebulous fish shapes are like my totems. They’re not real fish, of course, just as this is not a real river, and when one kayaks on a real river one does not see the fish and the water above and below. But, rather, I wanted to use them as a signifier for freedom. The lone kayaker is heading toward them. There is something very pure about solo outdoors adventures, and the way nature seems to wrap itself around everything. It can be eerie and overwhelming, but also exciting. The kayak is especially useful because a single-seat kayak ensures your solo status.

Clara Bow

Pastels and charcoal on paper.

Clara Bow.   

Mermaids II

The sequel to my Mermaids series. I have a strong affinity for octopi and squids. I love tentacles and the way that they move. I had been sketching an idea for a classical-looking girl with a squid on her head. The girls in this diptych are supposed to be fairly classical-looking. The purpose of the fish and squid (or is it an octopus?) are the quirky, unusual side of both my lovely friends, and of women in general. I think the photo captured the colors better in this shot, and I may reshoot the first mermaid at some point.

Pastels on paper. Thanks again to my lovely friend and model!

Mermaids I

This is part of my fish-woman series, an on-going study in female figures and nautical imagery. The title, Mermaids, refers more to literal mer-maids (women of the sea), and not the mythical half-woman, half-fish characters. To me, ocean is one of the single greatest metaphors for femininity. I have not found myself satisfied with the delicate, dainty, domestic imagery generally associated with women. Frail tea roses, china glasses, and lace, pretty as they might be, are too easily broken or put away in cupboards for my liking. (And I usually am the one to break them, too.) It has always puzzled me that the ocean, with its obvious connotations to womanhood in the way it bears life in water, should often in mythology be ruled by a male god, likes Neptune. I think the less Hellenized west and the non-western myth-makers understood this concept better.

Pastels on paper. Thanks much to my beautiful friend and model!

America

A pen and ink political piece on paper. I painted the background in acrylic wash. The color isn’t blood red, unless this is a Quentin Tarantino universe, in which case it’d be about right. The small details are difficult to see in the photo, so I’ll post detail images later. The figures are a satanic Uncle Sam, various demons, a dead and headless Miss America (bye-bye Miss America Pie…), and a butchered freedom figure in the foreground. Starting at the top and moving counter clockwise, the demons are Invasion of Privacy, Fascism, Pollution, Television, Apathy (with its eyes, ears, nose, and mouth sewn shut), Gluttony, Noise, and Violence. The design was based off of old Madonna and Child paintings from the late Medieval/Early Renascence periods.

Bretta

Bretta the Bloody Ballerina
pen and ink
This is a concept design for a comic that my sister and I are thinking of making.

Why My Eyes?

Why my eyes?
Pen and ink.
Yet another part of The Grim World. It seems as though this poor guy lost his eyes.

Poor Jimmy Beek
Pen and ink
Part of The Grim World series.