Red Region Inferno

Sometimes I find women to be completely void of all emotion.
A straight razor too seems void of all emotion in the exact same way to me.
So sharp, so perfect, able to cut so smoothly that you can’t even feel any pain, yet at the same time cut so deep that the wound may be your undoing.

This painting remains untitled.
I never could put a name to it.

The girl who inspired it is no longer a girl. She is a woman.
My memory of her will always be of her as just a girl though.
When I knew her she was young. I met her when she was about 19 or 20 and new her for just a few years.
I have seen her, and what she grew up to be over the years and she is so very different and yet the same.

This painting represents her back then.

just another zombie doll

It is sad and spooky how fucked up a girl can get by the time she is reaching her late teen years.
By the time I met this gal she had already become a zombie doll.
Pretty, jaded, angry, and hurtful to everyone around her.
She was mostly hurtful to herself however.
I tried to help her become a little less self destructive.
My own youth limited my ability to do so and I failed.
She went  down her very destructive path and ended up reaching some low places I am surprised she lived through.

She did survive though.

Now she is a completely fake person who pretends to be a stereotypical PTA type mommy.
Her smile while amongst the other PTA mommies is a painted on thing that immediately turns to a hard line of boredom and hate when she turns around so they can not see.

She hates her life.
She hates her past.
She hates that her youthful beauty has faded.
She hates not being in control.
She hates her 2 ex husbands that have to write checks for child support each month.
She hates being a mother to children with deadbeat fathers, and most of all hates knowing that she can’t undo her past mistakes.

All of these hates manifest themselves into cool and calculated plots to hurt everyone around her.

She is a cruel person.
She was cruel at 19 and has only sharpened the blade over the years.
Those that try to befriend her and get sucked into to her fake persona eventually find themselves under her blade.
She is a destroyer of lives.
Nobody is allowed to live a happy life if she is not allowed.

As an adult she takes her time and finds just the perfect way to destroy.
She will wait years if she must to get into a position to completely annihilate your life.

When young she would strike at first chance.

Ah… The patience one develops as they mature.

For more on my Zombie Doll series check out my Introduction To The Zombie Dolls post.

As I have mentioned before… sometimes I don’t have a clue what I am about to paint when my brush first touches a canvas.

This is the result of one of those moments.

The subject matter is not my usual, and I really had no idea why I created this at the time.

Another odd thing about my painting is that I have no clue or care of what people will think about my finished product while I am in  creation mode.

Yellow jacket turned out to be a very popular painting.
Or at least it was popular in the greeting card market and small prints.
It has been the most sold as cards of any painting I have done since 2000.

Why?
No clue.
I am glad people like it though.
It seems to want to be liked.

Yellow Jacket

An odd thing about this painting is that everyone sees it differently depending on their personality and outlook in life.

Some think it adorable while others find it spooky.
It has been called a little girl, a ghost, and a doll.
It touches some people and others just see a picture.

For me it is something else altogether, but I never like to explain such things because an artist never can see their own creation in the way another can.

A few years ago  I went through a pretty rough time mentally and artistically.
The results was an art binge.
I purging of my soul so to speak.

The result was the Zombie Dolls series.
It consisted of over 50 paintings, a few dozen poems, 2 sets of tattoo flash, and a bunch of actual tattoos that I did in a very hasty and almost sketch like fashion.

The Zombie Doll period lasted from mid 2003 through mid 2005.

What are the zombie dolls?
They are a representation of the inner essence of a certain type of woman.
The soul – spirit – inner being if you so choose to call it that.

The project started with the paintings.
Women from my past mostly.
The ones I knew well.

What you see is the essence of the woman.
The wounds are all self inflicted through lies, deceit, bad choices, self degradation, etc…
The stitches represent their attempts to hold themselves together.
The act of mutilating their own souls through actions that hurt others and themselves on a spiritual, moral, and mental level.

Visually they are still beautiful.
They are always attempting to hide their wounds and show themselves as strong, confident, self righteous women who are fine with the choices they have made if not outright proud of them.

Inside – behind the facade is the truth.
They are zombies.
Just going through the motions.
The damage has been done.

Ambrosia

This painting is tittled  ‘Ambrosia’

The simple words that went with it are…

Strong of the body,
Strong of the mind,
her broken spirit left behind.

The girl who inspired this painting was once a close friend and is in her own right a very talented artist.
She is also a very successful artist.
Her succes as an artist and a business person came at a price though.

Her hard demeanor and callous ways in the art world have branded her a bitch.
Her vanity has made her unapproachable to all but others of what appears to be her type.
Her perversions keep her from living a normal life.

Inside… all she wanted was love.
The tender sort of love that is unconditional and forever.
She broke the few men who offered her such love when young, and now it is out of her reach.

She has her power, her money, her fame, and respect.
She lives a lie and is always alone.
She long ago… gave up.

She is beautiful.
She is proud.
She is sad.

Ever go to a strong man competition?
If you havn’t… you should.
The flip cars, lift cars, press huge logs, throw kegs, and lift monster sized stones.
They do it fast too.
It is all about lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying the hugest things possible and usually in a semi race type of manner.

One of my favorite events is the tire flip.
Multi hundred pound tires flipped in a race.
Usually two competitors race side by side.
It is awesome.

Tire Flip

 I actually had a national tire flip champion model for me to do this painting.
We met up at  his gym and we went outside and he flipped tires.
He also did some atlas stones and some log pressing and some dead lifts… but the tire flip was what I was after.

Sometimes I don’t have much to say about a painting.
This is one of those times.
Make of it what you will.

Orange Cars