The Past Claws Its Way Out

The Past Claws Its Way Out

"The Past Claws Its Way Out" - oil on canvas, 15 x 30 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.” 
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

This painting has been sitting here for months, waiting for its story to be revealed.  And it came to me on the first cold, rainy day in a good long while, sipping coffee in the studio and listening to the soft sound of water.   Thanks to Hosseini, I have the scaffolding to deconstruct it.

I became what I am today at the age of ten, on a rainy day in Alabama in 1972.  I remember the moment as if I were standing there now, my dad asking me out on the patio of our townhouse to have a talk, through the sliding door and onto the cement pad which had no furniture or adornment.  It was the day I was tasked with finding and confiscating my mother's many hidden bottles, and, in a sense, I am still looking today.

There is a lot of information about how art helps the viewer, allowing access to emotions through a visual catalyst which may help reveal questions or truths which are otherwise hard to reach.  But really, art heals the artist.

It heals by reaching in and pulling out the guts of things - letting the creator examine them  from safe perches.  It heals by being slow to reveal - teasing, tickling, suggesting, nudging before dropping the veil.  And it heals by allowing the artist to speak about the art as if it isn't their own innards in the paint.  A little distance from the subject allowing the act of vulnerability to feel less unclothed.

Thank you, dear reader, for listening.  Have you had a revealing art experience?  I'd love to hear your story.

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About the art:  This piece was inspired by a very surreal and abstracted session with the AI bot, where I asked for wolves and women and Edgar Degas and Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt. The resulting flurry of images was startling and impactful.  I chose some elements of the images and decided on a vertical orientation with a couple of hot color edges to "frame" the action - there is distance between the malevolent character and the seemingly unaware human, yet they are forced into a confined space by the color.  Thinned oil paint layers were used almost exclusively, with exception of the hair and hot edges.  As always, resisting the urge to overly define, letting the paint whisper and nudge.