We Created a Monster and Had a Meltdown in the Meantime

We Created a Monster and Had a Meltdown in the Meantime
This painting was created and grew after a seven-month period of time away from my creative workload. This coincided with various COVID lockdowns and during the sale of my childhood home, my wife Catherine’s and my home, and my studio. We’d purchased land and a house on the mighty Mississippi River north of where we lived, which meant packing and dispersing of two households and my studio. The latter was a big challenge because of what it housed—30 years of my artistic life. And, we literally brought the studio building with us, off its foundation and into its new spot. My wife had always maintained and originated that plan, and while I won’t go into the logistics, suffice it to say it was a Herculean effort.
Finally settled into my “new” studio space, I began to feel the creative energy come roaring back. One prop kept sticking out, the masked Frankenstein sculpture I had created as a 17-year-old in my high school art class. Long tucked away in the treasures my mother had kept, it had been found when we were temporarily living in my parents home during our move. Catherine placed a pedestal in the front window and put the Frankenstein head on it and proceeded to decorate it in all manner of ways—wrapped in scarves and hats, and then, given COVID, a face mask. Once our move was complete, it founds its way to my studio, where it sat…waiting.
Uprooted from my studio for months, then faced with the COVID 19 pandemic, I felt the need to do a statement painting, long a genre of my career, particularly Vanitas paintings. The theme of the painting came together quickly. I wove in the American flag as the center drapery piece. COVID-19 had become a political issue and added to the continued polarization of our nation. The elephant and donkey had made an appearance in another painting in 2016 (“We the people are getting screwed”) and this painting was its sequel. The skull, dead rose, and toe tag soon appeared. Finally, the candelabra which I’d had since the 1970s and the last artifact I moved into the studio--its candles having melted in 1985. Now everything was in place.
I spent a couple weeks on a compositional drawing before getting into the paint. I drew the composition with vine charcoal, dusting off the excess and leaving a very fine line. Then I delicately drew in the lines with a fine sable brush, turpentine, and raw Sienna. I did an entire chiaroscuro underpainting with Raw Sienna and Brown Ochre Deep. When finished, it looked like a sepia ink drawing. I wanted all of my lights, middle tones and darks refined before beginning the color block in.
During this stage and the rest of the working time, the mask debate continued, then the anti-vaccine started to roar up. Everybody had to be in the right. Our Constitution was being abused for personal reasons; reasons born out of self-centered narcissistic behavior. Then came the real fiasco of January 6, 2021. An unbelievable event in our nation's history, our capital building attacked by American citizens for the first time since the War of 1812, a real slap in the face of democracy. The world watched in horror as America, a beacon of democratic freedoms, had attacked itself. How could we ever again be the hope of the world with this kind of display? The lies, denials, the false fabrication of history. The complete turning a blind eye to that day in the wake of a death and suffering.
And it goes on…We created a monster and had a meltdown in the meantime.