Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea

I would be lying if I said I don’t think about death a lot in a random-cloud-floating-by sort of way, but I’m in no way a danger to myself or others (for some who have asked). I have been in an odd mood and it’s less depression and more frustration with my own inability to express what is going on in my head when I look at the world. I am between the devil and the deep blue sea. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the line I’ve been straddling lately between creating abstracted painterly type work on one hand and more moody and straightforward black and white images with virtually no manipulation.

What started out as a statement about my disillusion with America became warped with my mother’s death. When I tried to settle myself down and produce a coherent visual statement to honor that experience, it went down a very dark rabbit hole very quickly. And as I have plodded through producing and editing work and trying to figure out what specifically I am trying to say and how I want to say it, it is slowly starting to clarify for me. But it hasn’t assumed its true shape yet.

Am I an onion or a book?

It feels like the difference between a book and a movie made from the book. The movie is literal, linear, with a priority on visual craft. The book lives in the mental sphere, expressing the inner monologue and an internalized vision that a movie cannot readily reproduce.

I’m coming to terms with having to let go. The America I thought I lived in has been an illusion. I have to let some preconceived notions go.

A mother, a couple of artistic mentors, and a dog have all passed in the last twelve months. I need to honor the relationships, but let them go.

The relationships with my friends have altered over time without my noticing. I need to cut some threads for my own sanity. I need to mend some threads.

The person I have been, the identity I have cultivated and behaviors I have worn may no longer be relevant or healthy. The body that I have relied on to do as I command may no longer function as I am accustomed to. I need to let it go.

I feel like I keep peeling back layers, sure I have finally gotten to the center of who I am, only to be wrong.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the duality of past and future, of what I see and what I think, of reality and illusion.

So from my last post to here, between the abstracted color and the truth-ish black and white I dance. The two ways each have their reasons for usage, so why not use that difference to illustrate the dissonance between selective reality and the color of noise in my head?

What I’ve been up to is making diptychs of black and white and color. I’m not sure I want to name these, since once I give something a name, it shapes how you perceive it. I’m much more interested in the stories you can tell me about what you see. But here it might be important. I’m not sure they will stick, or if I will end up editing the final product for paired images, but we’re allowed to try on different narrative devices until we find the one that tells the story best.