Llik

This painting started out as a therapy project, suggested by...you guessed it, my therapist. I'd been having some trouble reconciling a few issues regarding a certain person who will forever remain nameless, and this was the result.

I became intrigued by Jackson Pollock and his method of painting in my World Civilizations course. He would secure his canvas to the floor and then walk around it dripping, dropping, splashing, and sploshing the paint where he deemed necessary. Pollock also incorporated dirt, dust, nails, glass, cigarette butts into his paintings. Native American Sand Paintings were his inspiration for doing so. It was their belief that through the process of painting and the texture, this could cure whatever was ailing a person and/or their spirit.

What you can't see from this photo is that there are particles of dirt and ground pine cone in my painting. They weren't added for the sake of adding them. January of 2006 my best friend was murdered in the Ocala National Forest. When the family was allowed to hike back to the site, after it had been wiped of all traces of violence, I found a pine cone on the ground where my friend's body had been discovered. I've kept it all these years...why...I'll never know, but through the process of the painting I felt compelled to toss those small granules on to the canvas. They were representative of the one I had loved and lost - violently and tragically.

Violence. Passion. Depravity. Love. Captivity. Sorrow.

As they existed within me, so they were purged onto the canvas.