October/November 2005- I chronicled the creation of this painting from the initial sketch to the last work day. Click here to see the creation of this work. I also made a jigsaw puzzle (play). The idea for this came from a small drawing I made in my journal a few months ago, the idea however comes from much older works I've made. I was also spurred on by a minor accident I had while making frames for the last two works I painted. I was chiseling out a mortis with a chisel and I slipped. A good chisel is a sharp chisel, so when I slipped, I managed to run the chisel up the end of my thumb, slicing up my thumb nail and then out the side of my thumb. This moment reminded me of a small painting I was struck by in the Konikljke Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, Belgium (November 1999). I regret not having taken a picture or at least written down the name of the artist, but it was of a man who had just accidentally cut his thumb. What was so great about it was the artist had captured in paint that moment when a person disconnects from them self as a whole and identifies them self in/as parts. I could clearly see this man's thoughts; "How badly is my thumb cut?", not "How badly am I cut?". This disassociation of/from ones "self" is intriguing to me. Artistically speaking, no one questions a half length portrait, or a statue bust, but these things are only parts of a person, and these forms have not always existed. Generally speaking an ancient Greek's imagined self was a full length figure (however very few exist, except copies), complete with every part and appendage ( not that these were portraits, but our admiration for the Nike of Samothrace or the Venus di Milo must kill them). However a Roman only needed a head. It is from them that we've inherited the portrait bust. For the Roman, this schizophrenic image of one's self as only a head, like some kind of removable or interchangeable part, might have contributed to their overall fluidity as a culture and their ability to assimilate so many peoples and places. It also makes for an interesting museum display. There's nothing quite like the halls of severed Roman heads in the Vatican Museum but we clearly appreciate this Roman indifference to wholeness beyond just dedicating museum space, we embrace this. Just look at your driver's license. You use it to prove to strangers who you are, unlike the Roman who had images of themselves primarily to prove who they were (it was understood that your bust would be used as proof of ancestry by your successors). Today It is accepted that the modern condition is alienation, that's why you need an ID card, however I think our current condition is even more extreme. We are no longer detached from one another, we are detached from our own selves in every possible way, as if that photo of your face on your ID was you, or your belly fat was really not a part of "you". We are all in a perpetual state like the man in that painting who just cut his thumb. I have become acutely aware of this state through severe personal injury. Since I broke my leg in a car accident in 1996 I have not felt the same about my body. I have a relative distrust of my lower appendages (see a painting I made about it). They have not always been reliable and I expect they will betray me later in life. I think this distrust shows itself regularly in subtle ways. I have noticed I don't spend nearly as much time or attention washing my legs as I do my arms, or any other part of my upper body, with the exception of my back because I'm not all that flexible. But I try to make up for this by always featuring my legs in my paintings. However unlike a Greek, I try not to idealize myself, but I am told, and I believe them, that I do. This is the other component to our current state of complete disassociation and alienation. Not only have we inherited our Roman ancestors' ideas of self as broken up into parts, we judge them as being good or bad, holding them to some kind of ideal like our Greek forefathers. But unlike our Greek predecessors, we seem to not know the difference, or we are at least a bit confused. Below is the original sketch from my journal- January 10th 2005
The caption in this sketch reads: The artist searching for meaning within himself
Other images that Inspired this work-
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