Muriel Was Good at Pretending

Muriel Was Good at Pretending

"Muriel Was Good At Pretending" - oil on unstretched canvas, 18 x 18 inches.  (click on the image to purchase)

“Pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy.”
― MURDERBOT, Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

The lengths humans may go to in order to avoid looking directly at  bad (or uncomfortable) things are extraordinary. 

The scaffolding of denial (or avoidance) can be intricate and challenging to surmount.  Deeply ingrained, sometimes it's hard to see what is scaffolding and what is just a habit of self-protection.

If you're like me, even the preceding sentences can make you squirm a little.  Um, ew.  No thanks, not going there.  But, since ​artists are here to disturb the peace, as the meme says, let's keep going.

This piece, inspired by several AI bot images interpreting an emotive cyborg, immediately grabbed my big red button and said DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!  Because I am quite sure there are some things my brain wants to build intricate structures around.  And also, how does an AI bot know what "emotive" looks like? 

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About the art:  experimenting with unstretched canvas, which I gesso'd and taped to a piece of wood.  Following the usual steps (sketching with a long brush of thinned paint, slowly adding layers) but stymied a bit because this substrate mutes the pigment quite a lot.  Patience, more layers, thicker paint and the color pops began to show.  Lots of nice subtleties with the many layers.  And the resulting softness of the piece has me quite pleased.  Hello, Muriel.  Let's untangle that scaffolding.