recent musings/statements of pieces in progress

Untitled

"At the end of the line,

i can stay or i can go,

continue to fall or learn to fly.

Fear of the unknown

freezes me in my fate.

The dawn of change is not warm,

and time has been unkind.

This paralyzing fear has kept me blind,

and the indifference makes me numb.

If i choose to care,

once again i will feal that fear,

and ghosts start whispering in my ear."

~Exploring what makes a person decide to take an extreme action. Getting lost in the holes of the darkest of nights and not being able to see the light. Where is your mind at that moment? How do you get into this or out of this? You either fight or take flight; take flight into the unknown regions of your mind. Your darkest thoughts and fears becoming a frightening reality. I had so many of these moments for years of my life not knowing why. I believe they are mostly a manifestation of my anxieties.

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MY MUSE

"If I free the raven from his cage,

and bring upon us darker days,

please don’t hate me for what I’ve done,

I had no choice, the time has come."

~something that may look beautiful from the outside may bring pain and suffering to a person. My muse is my interpretation of just that. A muse is classicaly thought of as a beautiful image/goddess/person etc...that brings inspiration to an artist to create his or her own beautiful images. However, my muse offers me the darkest images and thoughts of the human mind. My muse appears beautiful on the outside, but inspires in me images of painful suffering as she empties the darkest corners of my mind. She forces me to come to terms with all of my most frightening demons. She offers me thorny branches instead of lush greenery and ripened fruit and blossoming flowers. She makes me grasp the thorns until my hands run with blood. She wraps me in thorny vines until i cannot move and must suffer in agony. She brings with her the raven and canendula flower, evoking painful memories and feelings of devastation, death, and grief. She is so tempting from her beautiful exterior yet her effect is like venom to me. This is my muse.

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Surfacing

...i have so many images of a person in the hands of death. In these images, there is a dark figure trying to save this person. A dark cloaked figure in disguise since this figure is light underneath. Somehow these two figures are connected but it is not clear how or why. They have some sort of immortal connection and the dark figure needs to save her to survive. This dark figure is not human; more of a spiritual being. This spiritual being is on the brink of death also, and these two depend on each others survival for their own.

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spill my blood

traditionaly this is a symbol of sacrifice or natural death. In this piece it is symbolic of cleansing of "bad blood". The release of poisoned thoughts and toxic memories. One taking responsibility for expelling the bad from one's own life. Spilling of thine own blood.

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unanswered questions

I had this professor in college who made it clear that a piece of work what not art unless it was beholding some great message about life. Is it wrong to be inspired by the simplest of details of the physicality of the work. Cannot the contrast of light and dark, the delicate line of the pencil, the depth and beauty of the color be inspirtion for both the artist and the viewer? The delicate line the pencil creates of the women's features onto the paper are a reminder of the delicate nature of the skin, the fragileness of human life, giving an appreciation for our existence in our harsh world. He was my favorite professor. Hated by most (and most failed his class), he pushed our limits as artists, forcing us to think about what and why we are artists; what impact art has on the threads of our society. I believe that art should not be based on feeling and fact alone, but i've learned that the physicality of the piece can indeed be a vehicle for interpretating a meaning.