The nights in the studio are slow...
Unproductive...
Repetitive...for repetition's sake...
Filled with volumes of confused, confusion
...with plenty of room and time...for Death...
...and short lived ideas...
...sinister and dangerous conditions...
Somewhere, in the middle of building a portfolio, selling, producing, creating, shaking hands, slipping business cards, and enunciating my name properly for potential patrons....
Suddenly, there is something unrecognizable within the familiar confines of the studio walls...
...a buried whimper of exhaustion beneath the overwhelming success...
...of a hobby, turned therapy, turned expression, turned dependence, turned obsession...turned notoriety.
I can only hope...that behavior is irrelevant to the inner work.
"...Too strange to smooth the surface
Too maudlin to taste the sunshine
Too gross to feel sterility
Too odd to be not..." - Effectua
I have to be spoken for...my mouth is parched and chafed.
I cursed beneath my breath and the humidity.
...is my Muse, here with me now?
...has She always been?
...and are those tears She cries, tears that came without cause or aforethought...
...come from a pain felt in a past life deep within her muscle memory...?
...flexing, hardening...a platter of swollen sinew...
...and poetry...poetry, I tried to give up myself.
"...What will she find today?
What poor soul will she save to her own ruin?" - Effectua
I caught my reflection in the studio mirror by accident. I didn't recognize any of the hundreds of expressions upon my face. Just the fleeting evidence of a young man and the effects of a descent into a part of himself...he has yet to be introduced to.
The following images were impromptu self portrait paintings upon torn strips of watercolor paper painted one right after the other in a furious painting session. A removal of persona and ego...until lastly...the Artist, revealed and accounted for, by color.
"Descent" - Self Portraits of the Artist
Oil On Watercolor Paper
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