Category Archives: Misanthropy

Self Portrait

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‘Three of Me’, 24″ 32′, oil on panel. 1996.

I had a small mirror to look at when I was working on this series of paintings. All the characters in Domesticated are using some form of my face, including the female characters when they show up. They are not intended to be photographs, they are impressions.

I was in a fury through most of this time as I had recently lost the lease on my gallery Bedlam. It was a bank desicion. The complexity of the Neurotica pieces seemed to intimidate people. A large field of skin tones is upsetting, its supposed to be, the work isn’t intended to decorate your bathroom. Cartoons are very popular and that was the basis of the style. A simple line drawing with the blood coloured paint mix, either with a knife or a brush. The colours filled in after the lines were in. Then the colour of the uniform I used to capture the psyche of the viewer just with colour. They all wear uniforms, just like you do without realizing.

This was actually ten years prior to the diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, or whatever they are calling it now so as not to upset anyone, because that’s more important. I thought there was something wrong with me for most of my life, partly from people saying ‘there’s something wrong with you Graham’. The sadness and anger were there at the same time, all the time now, an emotional roller coaster running at high speed. A speedball of emotions, chemicals dumped into my blood by my own brain, thanks brain, endorphines and adrenaline, speed and morphine. At times no sleep for days. Which is great for creating the physical works, but there is always a crash. And sleep for a day, then do it all over again.

I’m sure now my brain was cooking itself. I was addicted to my brains behaviour. The psychologist actually said this in session, I am addicted to myself. At this point there were no other drugs, or alcohol for years. It was enlightening and exhilirating to feel that mania without anything. The paintings had to happen, they kept me from putting all the energy I had into bank robbery or something like murder. Painting keeps me out of jail.

And twenty years later it was pretty much the only conclusion the psychiatrists and psychologists could muster. I’m not really an artist. I’m an aggresive mentally ill patient of theirs, who paints pictures to keep from killing all of you. I had no choice but to visit with them, I was on yet another death bed, the crashes can be deadly too. I needed them to keep me alive, so I can paint. That is what I always said about my work, I’m a painter of things, the word artist is yours to use as you see fit.

Domesticated VI

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‘Domesticated VI’, 24″ X 32″, oil on panel, 1996.

This one does have a title its ‘do as I say!’,

I was using a palette knife and a brush for these. I would mix new dried blood colour for doing each line drawing on the blank panel. I had a little mirror hanging on the same wall, and would usually start with a sketch right on the wall. It was covered with little red doodles of my face and attempted body distortions.

I am trying to make the image with as few brushstrokes as possible.

Domesticated

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‘Domesticated II’, 24″ X 32″, oil on panel, 1996.

There are quite a few painting in this style. I have 32 of them close by or hanging up. Possibly fugurative expressionism, I’m not fond of style labels, it leads far too often to people thinking its connected to or should be compared to a different artist, it is not in someone else’s style, it might be labeled a style, that’s all. The style I developed here was to strip down the elaborate brushwork from the neurotica paintings. A simplification of the image, so the idea that you have been domesticated, is perhaps more easily understood. What are we like when we are put in the same confined spaces as the animals we eat. Soft and mushy bones, fatty muscles, psychological breakdown, extreme violence. Homo domesticus.

Out the window…

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‘Out the window.’ 9″X12″, oil on canvas.

And then there’s the bird, and the flowers, actual morning glories, all you need is the delicious aroma of hot chocolate in a mug, 🙂Then you can leave…

One of the final oil paintings I made, a strange idea, an invitation to leave quickly. I was in a bad mood, as I was unable to use oil paints. Use oil paint and die the doctors told me, they may have been trying to stop me from accidentally painting something.

Framing the Unnecessary.

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Temporarily adding the unnecessary to the entropy wall.

It is clearly a large painting, more than half the size of that sculpture.

‘The Unnecessarily Erotic Amoebas of Port Elgin’, watercolour, 21″ X 30″, framed its 28″ X 36″, $25,000.00 US

One of my favourite frame jobs. This one is 28″ X 36″ overall. I made the wooden part with ebony, more for its weight than anything, I painted it black anyway. The inner frame is of gold filled copper bars, not plated, I think there is 6 or 7 ounces of gold that you could recover, but its a secret thing to hang on your wall you see, who would know why you paid $25,000.00 US for this unknown artists work.

Cheap Gasoline!

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Gasoline is $1.23 per litre here in Canada, it was the last time I ventured outside into the adrenaline soaked roadways that suffocate my house. I have to walk. Everybody looks angry. Nobody is moving fast enough for anyone else. It is as dangerous as the wilds of Africa, I tell myself. However, the lions are far fewer and further between than the metallic entertainment boxes that whiz around the tarmac like ants on LSD. I have no idea how to give LSD to ants. But I can picture in my mind the ants would look just like you do driving around aimlessly looking for the last deal. There must be sugar here somewhere!

As I don’t drive I have no idea if that price of gasoline is too high for you, or too low. I don’t actually do anything, or go anywhere. But I’ve never heard anyone else say we should pay more. I wonder how cheap we should make it. You know, so you can all have all the toys you ever wanted, in your houses, in every room even, and the car too. If gasoline were 25 cents per litre, just think of how big our cars could be. What is the right price for luxuries. How little do you want to pay for them.

But life is great here in Canada, I can still do this. Although I’m using dollar store art supplies and found pieces of plywood I can still say something. I have a nice place to live, even though I feel I am surrounded by distaste and suspicion, its not their fault, they are oblivious of the world, and I am paranoid. Its a horrible place to look at. But someone glued my eyes open and turned the volume up full blast. You don’t think there is a connection between what we want and what the planet and its people are paying now? Or the 600,000 children under 5 on the verge of dying from starvation.
Or, if your in Canada, 400,000 under 3 year olds, it sounds better for some reason. For some, I think, the price of gasoline will be just right when you don’t hear me anymore. I will be out of your sight.

I wish someone would make a ‘dislike’ button.

Famine

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Biting the hand that barely feeds me.

These images are from 1993-1996. They are how I was affected the last time there was massive disaster/war/famine in the ‘horn’ of Africa. I believe we were busy balancing our bank accounts then also. Check your history books. It is all there if you have the nerve to have a look. Including what we have been up to, the excuses we have for taking what we want because they aren’t using it anyway. They won’t notice will they. Any nation on the planet now knows that the worst thing that can happen to them is finding something in their country that we in the domesticated west want. We don’t like paying for our things, we feel we are better, entitled to whatever we want. We have achieved a point in time where we have an entirely new generation of entitled people that really believe that this is the fault of the weakest.

Do you know what this level of malnutrition will do the mind of a human being? Once again, look it up, I have. If you’ve entered first year university, you must know this. You are not innocent of this. You know that this country is now in the midst of another disaster because we left their minds bent and told them to figure things out for themselves. They may be tearing themselves to pieces, but we let this happen, again. We know of the psychological disaster too. These are abandoned children, starved to the point of death, then rescued by our enormous guilt, injected with our poisons that won’t let them die from disease, given a gun and told to pick up their bootstraps, get a job, fix this mess we made and we might save you again someday. What do we want them for? Why are we doing this? It seems far more like our demands would have them all dead so we can have what we think they might have, that’s possibly going to be useful to us now or in our fantasy future were everyone is white and awesome. Perhaps a vital mineral for the production of 3D computer phone eyeglasses, or the ultimate dream, a flying car. I am writing this on a Mac, I feel a twinge of guilt every time I look at it, which is all day, every day. My only solace is that, even though I am powerless to stop the unfolding disaster in Africa, I can speak, I can paint a picture for you.

Africa

Hunger

Innocent? You didn’t know? The only innocence left on this planet is dying in a desert surrounded by hyenas trained by us!

Greed (2011)

 I need to lighten the mood here. Its so depressing. Maybe I can be judgemental for a while instead. Some light relief. Good natured hostility. 

 

I have trouble putting things into words, so I paint pictures because there isn’t enough time to put everything into words, and you can’t argue with me about what they mean.