There has been a question that has been asked about my artwork for years. For those who know about my imagery you probably know what question I am about to address. For those who don’t, there is a recurring expression in my drawings and paintings and that is screaming. While not all my images consist of this particular expression it is a consistent theme that shows up in my artwork. It receives mixed responses due to the fact that everyone interprets the emotion behind the expression differently. I consider this a good thing because art should be open to interpretation. One question that constant is why is the subject of the painting screaming? The answer to the question isn’t as simple and short winded as some of the answers I have delivered in the past.
The truth about it is that the theme started before I even decided to go to college and pursue art. At the end of my eleventh grade school year I spent my summer and 3 months into the school year in a rehabilitation facility. At that age I considered it to be one of the roughest, most mentally taxing experiences of my life (little did I know that in the next few years I’d lose my front teeth, become homeless, and go through a lot more worse shit.) When I was 16 though, 6 months with minimal contact with the outside world surrounded by a bunch of people I didn’t know from a can of paint was a really crazy experience. What was crazier was that during this time I was forced to confront past experiences and correlate them with the behaviors that got me into this facility. It was ridiculous and at times the situation seemed very hopeless and I began to question when the hell I would get out of the facility. It was then I got a journal and I began to draw in that journal. Before this I had only had one art class in high school and I really didn’t know much about drawing. I used to draw Dragon Ball Z characters in middle school, but for the most part I stopped drawing after ninth grade. Long story short, I didn’t have much of a drawing foundation, but I remembered some things about drawing the face from my one art class in ninth grade. I began to combine that with elements I remembered from drawing DBZ characters and I drew in my journals. During those six months and throughout my senior year I kept drawing those faces, but at the time I considered them personal due to the fact that many of them were accompanied with writing that depended on how I felt at the time.
In essence the drawings were a representation of all of the negative emotions I felt at the time. There was a transformation happening and in essence I was also documenting that. Many of my drawings at that time represented some sort of duality and internal struggle. I had no better way to express that struggle than through drawing faces for the main reason of not knowing how to draw much else. Even when I was released from the facility, I kept to myself and distanced myself from all the friends I did have in the past. I really didn’t want to speak on those six months and I wanted to move on so I continued to use drawing as my catharsis.
Having to start over in my senior year of high school wasn’t really a fun experience. Most of the time I just wanted to be invisible, but with me being over six feet tall, disappearing wasn’t an easy feat. So I kept to myself and just went through that last school year as under the radar as I could be. Overall it took about 3 years after being released for me to really feel comfortable in social environments.
When I went to college and decided to pursue art I simply continued to do it because I liked the detail in a screaming face. It wasn’t until I was about to graduate did I realize that it was a continuation of my way of coping with things. I had a conversation with a very wise person to come to that specific realization. While I may never really abandon that imagery, I have since been trying to move forward with other deviations to make myself a better artist.
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