AXROSS
In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.
I'm not sure if the plaid is really my style. It clashes with moonshine coming in from behind my head. From around the broken stained glass, I can still make out the stars from above, illuminating. But everything hurts. I bite down on my nails, even though you told me not to. Blood is spilling still. Like an open wound, everything crumbles. Maybe these scars will feel better one day, but my back aches with their loss.
.jpg?width=422&height=500&name=unnamed%20(3).jpg "Fallen from Grace")
How could you let this happen? Am I being punished for being what you created me to be?
You told us, BE NOT AFRAID, but I am. How can I live without fear?
Fallen from Grace is a Transformative work. As an art installation, it is immersive and a combination of mediums. A mixture of found objects, shrinky plastic, and painting that have been set in a time and space.
This is an expansion on the pain and trauma and grief that comes from the opposition to authority by means of an institution like the church. The pain of the separation is overwhelming, like an open wound, even though it might be better for you in the long run.
The stained glass has been crashed through, leaving destruction and loss of self. The scars from that kind of identity clash don't go away easily. There is a contrast of a few themes like humanity vs divinity, reality vs dreamscape, spirituality vs religion and spirituality and science.
Everything is connected to each other. Stained glass has been littered about the floor and encompasses the space, even though pieces are small.
An installation can be a living painting, made up of different elements that work together to transform. That must be why I hate labels. When I start a work of art, I never know how it’s going to end. Sometimes it never does. To be limited to a certain plane of words to describe us limits creativity. Because if I am only a painter, can I also be a muralist or illustrator or a builder of installations?
I define this period of my art as AXROSS.
There's motion associated with the word, swinging, directional. There’s also confrontation and action. A cross, like the crucifix, X, too like a sideways cross. X is the unknown variable, X marks the spot.
Now, I truly believe that everything is connected to everything else.
No matter how many times it changes, we are always led back to the same thing;
a cycle that never ends, a cycle that always continues.
.png?width=944&height=400&name=unnamed%20(3).png "St Mary's Cathedral")
I could write you a hundred poems that all say the same thing but use different words,
memories that never really happened and dreams that never really end.
Creepy crawlies dig into the back of your spine.
I want people to be unsettled and uncomfortable, not just with the content but with the form as well.
Realism is not the goal. I want to be RAW.
-1.jpg?width=444&height=350&name=unnamed%20(1)-1.jpg "Icarus")
In The Beginning
Way of Sorrows is an attempt to dig into personal grief and potential assimilation that religion has inflicted in regard to identity and healing processes. How does objectification and tradition influence beauty? Will I find answers to questions I’ve asked since my youth in this work? Comfort is not viable when we learn and grow.
But there is nothing that ties you to who you always were, no head or hands to think or create, leaving destruction and loss of self. The scars from that kind of identity loss don’t go away easily. Spirituality and religion fight for significance over another.
A halo shines brightly, divine, despite the suffering and gore beneath it. A mess of mark making litters the background, charging with energy and feeling. Voices are asking us if we are questioning the institutions that have told us how life is supposed to work all our lives, of the questions during class no one bothered to answer.
Arms stretched out like on a crucifix, a bleeding pomegranate emerges from the heart. Fruit of prosperity and fertility, but also of the dead. Death as the end, death as change and possible resurrection. No head, no identity, but divinity.
Genesis
.jpg?width=275&height=500&name=unnamed%20(6).jpg "The")
.jpg?width=349&height=500&name=unnamed%20(1).jpg "Holy")
.jpg?width=292&height=500&name=unnamed%20(5).jpg "Trinity")
In the Holy Trinity, eyes have been voided. Dead-eyed and vacant stare. There is no looking nor seeing, but yet some knowledge remains reflected in the golden celestial objects.
-2.jpg?width=250&height=250&name=unnamed%20(1)-2.jpg "Holy Close Up")
.jpg?width=256&height=250&name=unnamed%20(4).jpg "Trinity Close Up")
The limited color palette also allows for the light green to wash through.
Green becomes something that is visceral. Green is everywhere in nature. It's overwhelming and abundant, almost like breaking out of your human skin.
Humans have always longed for answers, of explaining nature and creation with science and religion.
- What might push each cycle to begin again?
- When does the cycle continue over?
- All parts come out of a whole but are some parts missing?
- Are you questioning the institutions that have told you how life is supposed to work?
Are you biting your nails? They are your biggest weapon.
Change is everlasting
Yet everything is connected one way or another.
The rainbow light filtering into the cathedral once traveled through your favorite sunset.
Growing might be a painful and horrible process but there's also a beautiful mystery to it. Art, too, is mysterious.
I hope this work functions like a puzzle, with no one right answer. Everything that has ever existed can influence art and that simply makes it better.
Past, present, and future are one.
Everything is connected.
The cycle continues.
.png?width=640&height=480&name=unnamed%20(2).png "Stained Glass")
