filtered smut on the TV set

Things are becoming clear.

Upon talking to my lovely girlfriend about my work, I have come to realize some new things. She has always said two things about my artwork: 1) it often looks like spaghetti (she's given all of my shapes and forms different names ranging from "Baby Fungus" to "Noodle Guts") and 2) it's very uncomfortable. I always shook both of these statements off with a sweet "Yes, girlfriendo, they are supposed to be that way."

Today I had the brilliant idea to ask her why the images are uncomfortable. She paused for a moment, and explained that in a way, the work forces her to revert to childhood. When we are children, we are less afraid of and/or intimidated by aspects of life and death. Kids are fascinated by the dirty, nitty gritty of bodies without, generally speaking, internalizing their deeper implications. They play with worms, enjoy discussion of bodily excretion, and like things reminiscent of bodily organs (consider Scabs N Guts, the meducational board game(!), or Trolli's Brain Surge). Whether this is due to ignorance or true courage, she told me, is unimportant. Guts are something we're interested in until they become "real," until we've had one experience to shatter our innocent perceptions. When our childhood bubbles burst, organs become scary and grotesque.

The bodily imagery thus reminds her of what she called the "softest, scariest, most sensitive parts of our being." The work evokes pictures of visceral circuits that clearly go together and make patterns but seem separate and broken (extracted and exposed, perhaps) from the body. The pieces therefore conjure up memories of childhood and nostalgia but presents them as unsettling and grotesque. Even in reference to a pleasant childhood, the discomfort of the body-esque landscapes cannot be avoided.

I had never thought about how the idea of childhood and nostalgia might affect my work, but I think she makes some good points here. While I never have made that exact connection on my own, my own drawing is a process that reverts me back to my own childhood. As a kid, I desperately wanting to be a cartoonist for some Disney-like company. This pipe dream stuck along for about fifteen years. My childhood was full of drawing cartoon characters and making my own DIY animations. In high school, however, I began painting and left the cartoon idea behind. My work became less and less illustrative as time when on ... until very recently, when the illustrative nature of my work has reached a consistent all-time high. I have returned to a process that very much mimics that of my youth to address "grown-up" ideas.

This is interesting. I have much to ponder.