Gallery Talk (It's over)

Photo taken after the reception with my two biggest fans.

The backbone of this piece is honesty and vulnerability. That sounds a little odd, but I wanted to be more honest with myself as an artist, and more vulnerable by putting something more personal out there.

For years, I have had a recurring nightmare where I’m attacked by wolves. The dream itself sometimes differs slightly, but the premise is that I'm being left alone to face this attack. The dreams are graphic and violent and sometimes wake me in fear. I couldn't think of a more perfect thing to use to put you guys into another world. Then I started thinking about "the how." How am I supposed to create a nightmare with paint? How can I make you experience it?

Before the semester began, I actually went to see live wolves in captivity. I went a few times and watched them be fed. I watched documentaries. I discovered something. The wolves in my dream were nothing like the wolves in real life. If you've ever been around these animals, you know that they're sneaky and agile. They’re generally not these rabid predators like my fears had led me to believe.

But what intrigued me most and helped me to come up with the imagery for these paintings was how they moved when they attacked something or fed on something. I got to see their pack behavior as they fed. The two main wolves, the alpha and the beta, went directly to the kill. They focused in on their meal. What sparked my fascination the most in this situation was what the rest of the pack did. They completely avoided the kill and the alpha and beta. They circled around the scene at a trot. As they circled, they were looking outside the cage at us. Their eyes were locked in as if they were threatening us.

The funny thing about these situations is what adrenaline does to us. When we’re faced with what our mind perceives as serious danger, our “fight or flight” sense kicks in. Some of our senses are heightened while others are duller. We generally focus in on the immediate danger, and everything else becomes a blur. This can make us more vulnerable to a danger we are not focusing on, or it can help us defend ourselves.

That’s what helped me determine how I wanted this to look. I decided that I needed to use the size of these pieces to make you feel inferior. I chose to make them vertical, because we view the world horizontally. The vertical composition is unnatural. We have to work more to look at it. I chose to hang them this way so that you could become a part of it. Instead of looking in on a 2dimensional painting at an attack scene, I wanted to make you experience it.

I used the warm colors on the side panels to give you that hot, uncomfortable sensation that sometimes happens. I could go on and talk about all the details of why I did certain things, but the main idea is that I wanted to create an atmosphere of discomfort and hostility. I’d love to answer any questions if you have them.