This is the first out of several paintings I intend to make for my next show in May. This body of work will deal with very difficult subject matter for me. Love. I am a fan of love. I've gravitated towards it (as a subject) in any form of art I ever considered as important. All the movies, music, books, visual art, literally everything I find even vaguely interesting outside this world of hard reality, one way or the another orbits this massive subject matter. More accurately, I mean erotic love. Relationship between two human beings made of all the fascinating things we choose, decide and make in this crazy, unselfish act.
All of my heroes in art have dealt with it, quite good I might add, thus made it so hard for me to avoid long shadows they cast upon me with their enormous influence. Sitting down with friends, I've mentioned and cited Dylan or Cave so many times - even here on this blog..I can't even begin to explain how small I feel trying to explicitly deal with this.
I want the project to cover some of the darker notions of this particular feel. Not the ones peachy and flowery that we all tend to relate to when things - with the object of our desire - are sailing happily along, but the ones that evolve of misguided notions we have, failed attempts and when things aren't quite living up to expectations.
The title of this work is White Buffalo. It is the first work in this show dealing with one of love's dark sides. It points to that hidden side of life where lives a hidden person, somebody who in reality will never know to what extend they occupied someones days. I'ts that person you tried so hard for them to notice you. The one who you wore all the right clothes for, had all the haircuts, made the playlists, burned them movies, been there at the bar - just the right time, but it never worked. Somehow they stayed immune. And when they didn't, it was even worse. They made you go all the lengths, never getting you anywhere. Spending so much time thinking of them, you'd somehow dream up all they'd never live up to in reality. I wanted to make a painting of an eerie mood, showing a ghost-like someone, always distant, never here. She holds a paper buffalo, of course suggesting Charles Bronson movie. Might as well called it Moby Dick, but the reminiscence of Buffalo's surreal atmosphere recalled from my early boyhood, was the initial impulse for the work. In the end sadly she doesn't exist. Blown out of proportions in our yearning mind, she'll stay there forever.