Domestic Violence A Drawing

Domestic Violence A Drawing

I have decided to upload every day drawing that has not been seen, or on exhibition, daily.  I have a whole section of my oeuvre that has remained unseen.   Much of this work is not typical of my current work, although I am seeing connections.   As I was going through my drawings, I realized just how many were figurative. 

 Much of the work I have shown have been abstract.  The process of looking back is always educational.  It also shows what works, what was a near hit, near miss and ideas worthy of further exploration.

At the time I created this piece, “Domestic Abuse,”I was living in downtown Phoenix.  My environment was vastly different from the one I have now in many ways and my work often reflected that world.   Ideas from the news, or people I knew and met were all subject matter.  My art was very much a diary of what I encountered. 

In retrospect there was a “dream like” quality to my life back then.   To this day, I do not know how I survived during that period.   I was self-sufficient, but it was a struggle.  I managed for a long time on dreams, aspirations, frustrations, debt, a living room for a studio and art.    Flash forward a few years and I have a dedicated space as a studio.  I envisioned these things happening, but had no idea how I was going to move forward. 

 It is funny how I was able to predict where I would be then.  I had a picture of the future, and I wanted that picture.  I suppose that is part of art, romantic wildly unbelievable wants that you hope become very real.

Art is always a struggle.  It was then, and it is now.  But I have always held on tenaciously to my art.  It has never been compromised to the point where I was embarrassed with what I created.  I held on to my vision with steel like determination.   My feeling has always been that you owe yourself, your patrons and the public the very best work possible.  It is a duty to expand, grow and develop.  To become stagnant is the ultimate sell-out. 

“Domestic Abuse” was my comment on violence in the home.  Personally, I have never tolerated any form of physical abuse.  It is horrific that we have confrontations that end in pain, destruction and sometimes death.   At the time I created this drawing, a crime had been committed that was drawing a great deal of media attention.  The details escape me.  

What remained of my memory was that this work was centered on the type of images shown to victims of violence.  The images are black and white generic people with notation on where a wound was delivered and the like.  They had a minimalist feel to them being that they were stark black and white line drawings.

I took the images I had seen in the New Times of those crime aids and transformed them into a prisma color drawing.   The tension between the dark image and its source was contrasted with bright colors.  I liked the contrast.  The notion of this kind of duality has been present in a number of pieces I have created.   The gathering of dark subject matter with bright bold up beat color has always had an attraction to me.   Aesthetics mean a great deal to me. 

One of the reasons, among several, that I create art stems from the simple fact that I like beauty.  What I am referring to is not the saccharin  common placer definition of beauty, but something richer that is often ignored.   Finding beauty in the unlikely has always held an attraction for me.  “Is there in truth no beauty?”  I have often asked that question.  “Is there no beauty in truth?”

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