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.”