Ten X Ten X Ten

Our environment is ever changing and asymmetrical. It is, at best filled with an impenetrable chaos filled with unpredictability and volatility. Painting in my aesthetic and the ridiculous balance it carries, is my way of coping with an unbalanced world, and my outright need to put order back into the chaos that surrounds me.

Furthermore, my need for symmetry is over compulsively inherent. I become obsessed with not only duplicity, but the idea of mirroring, and separating the twinning of something into positive and negative, light and dark, hot and cold, and so forth. This piece, entitled “Double Shadow”, is a statement to that obsession.

In this piece, there are two Identical Mickey’s in length and width. In fact, everything about them structurally is symmetrical. I decided to have them exist in the same world, but with different elements. They are surrounded by a world of broken nonsensical kaleidoscope shards of different temperatures. The one on the left is cold, and the one on the right is warm. They are exuding pigments of the opposite temperature to their background, that drips from their frame. Inside them, lay the words “DOUBLE SHADOW” in both light grey and titanium white that, too are opposite from each other.

Everything about them is different, and yet the structure and design is the same, providing a dichotomous effect of balanced different similarities. This piece, where the world is shown with unpredictability and chaos, Mickey is the anchor inside the storm. I consider these TWO pieces merged together, hence the idea of this being both 29 and 30.

This is the first piece in letting go of my control of the geometric grid. This is against my artistic nature to let go of anything, yet at the very same time I am flexible to change outside my art. The two semi-dichotomous sentiments generally should be at war with each other, however in the process, the battle is traded in for an understanding. What you see is the beginning of retiring the comfortable nature of “coloring in the lines”.

I wasn’t that kid in class that colored outside of the lines. I was however the kid that took interpretive freedom with the subject that needed coloring. Sure there would be a coloring book page with a bunny giggling with an easter basket, and I’d do my best to use whatever crayon possible to acutely fill in the subject. I would however be far too engrossed in drawing other things around the bunny like a 7 headed scorpion monster from the realm of whatcha’macall’it to ever call anything finished. These two ideas, even as a kid strike a familiarity with my life now. Its the classic subject of the licensed character, and the tight rope of expression .vs. rendition…

This piece, entitled “Mickey Pixel Drip” is the gateway of freeing the grid. This is the bleeding of geometry while maintaining the template of Mickey intact. Sure the colors are tight within the frame, but outside, the checkers have no gravity, and they begin to drip. Mind you, there is STILL a sense of control in this, as the bottom of the bleeding pixels do not lose their boxed in frame to a circular (teardrop) base. It was suggested that I round out the bottom of the pixels, and I … couldn’t, because I wanted to still have a little bit of control, and maintain that box’ish aesthetic.

Mickey Squared was the last piece where I executed a sense of control. Mind you, this is very thing that seems to define me as an artist. I’m known for a sense of rigid lines and every color has a place and everything makes sense. I work with a 1/4th angle brush to the bone until its obliterated. I used to strive for physical perfection in my work. I worked endless nights trying to make sure that every single line, angle, and square were perfect down to their measurements. This almost seems self defeating in a sense, since perfection in the cleanest line will read as a graphic design execution, and therefore removes the organic human quality of the piece.

It wasn’t until I found Roy Lichtenstein’s work at LACMA, that I let go the very idea of perfection. I saw he left pencil lines in around his circles and remember feeling this massive weight lift off of my hands, as if I was automatically granted permission to be human for a second from a teacher who had no idea I was a student. I remember being by myself, pointing at the painting and spontaneously screaming “A-HA!!!” at the piece, causing all the fellow patrons to quickly turn to look at me.

I forget that I am creating a body of work sometimes. It feels as if I’m having those dreams where I’m working, and the result never changes, and I’m left waking, realizing I’ve been dreaming the whole night working. My mind saturated with thought, process, that the art itself is a testament to my OCD behavior, striving for the perfect number, closing in on the perfect pattern, relegating the odd, and embracing only the even. The art is the process, not necessarily the final result.

This was, for the time being, the bungee cord piece. Where I stood at the ledge of creating my index of safety, before jumping off into more treacherous, and certainly more experimental work. I knew I’d be able to, and eventually would go back to structured pattern… but this was the first time I had the idea to even think about jumping into the depths of my imaginative capabilities.