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Assuaging Anxiety 1
17x23"
ink, acrylic on colored paper
May First Friday 2011
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As the Arts Incubator withers away, I look to efflorescence, just months ago. I’m trying to do so many things to prepare; I'm getting nowhere fast. As my mind plans, curates, structures the next 14 chess moves, anxious whirlpools threaten. On replay, I envision Scratchy's skeleton ripped out of his body: Itchy laughs, Scratchy dies. It's a most uncomfortable kind of tension, a paradox of sensation: my outer body stationary and my marrow sprinting forward. I often have this psuedo-agoraphobia before social events, which I don't really understand. If I truly believe that painting can heal, then I should let it do so.
So this was me, in the afternoon, sublimating my anxiety before my first First Friday.
An existential painting in that I wasn't looking at anything, nor was I responding to the work as created. Without forethought, I merely used what was readily available and painted as a release. Cathartic is too strong of a word, but the glee in creation is a salve that other generally worthwhile activities don't give me (writing, exercise).
I already had colored paper ready for use (something developed during Jason Scuilla's drawing class and my love for Albrecht Durer's watercolor drawings-which I thought were white pencil on colored paper, but oh no, they're all watercolor with brush and the "white lines" are the white of the paper, because he's just that much of a badass.)
