Shattered Love, a Story in Contemporary Art

Nothing makes a human feel better than falling in love… the experience of limerence. Feel-good brain chemicals abound, and any contact with the beloved, even by text, creates a surge of dopamine reward. A simple embrace releases the calming, bonding presence of oxytocin.

I’ve done drugs, and these are the best drugs.

And, consequently, one suffers the worst pain of all when they are withdrawn. For someone like me, with intimacy and addiction issues, the experience of love is the most perilous of events.

But, life happens. And sometimes love happens. And usually it ends, in ways painful and potentially dangerous.

I fell in love not long ago, head over heals, beyond wonderful, in a way reminiscent of meeting the first guy I lived with 39 years ago. Yes, that’s going back a very, very long time; to the time I met Ken, before he found out he was HIV positive, which made our physical connection and erotic playfulness first difficult, then impossible.

This recent love was like that. It was intimate, innocent, fun, erotic, hot.

It might have gone on much, much longer. I hoped it would continue to grow, but our dreams were different, and other things complicated the picture, things catalytic and fundamental and catastrophic, and it ended.

I wasn’t consciously thinking of these events the past few days as I worked on the piece that became Shattered Love… Still Beautiful. My best work reflects such interior experiences indirectly.

It’s only clear later, not during the process, what the piece is about.

The piece came out of technical curiosity.  I wanted to experiment with something I did early in my art journey, when I sometimes cut up and wove together two photographic prints, or one print with itself. But instead of photographs, I would use original material in a way that uses slices of the original running left-to-right and right-to-left. (Or vertically.)

Here you can see the original material, let’s call it “Love”. And then the material cut up into strips of varying widths, which I combined into Shattered Love… Still Beautiful.

The technical aspects aren’t important. The only thing that matters, always, is this: do you like it?

Let me know.

Abstract Art in Pink and Black

In Resilience, my homage to homosexual victims of the Nazis, the viewer is drawn toward the pink triangle on black at its heart. Surrounding the heart are rows of victims and scenes from a concentration camp, and the train tracks outside the camp.

Community

For this piece I decided to again use a central pink triangle on black, but to create a completely abstract work of triangles coming out from the center. The triangles again pull toward the center. But I added other lines of black and pink, of varying width, symbolizing the connections in our LGBTQ community and our historical connections with our predecessors and those who will come later.

I hope Community is as powerful, in its own way, as Resilience.

Study in Pink & Black

Thanks to the process I used in creating Community, I had a good bit of black mat board with designs in pink and black as a byproduct. Sixstar founder Jason Hackenwerth kept looking at those and commenting how interesting they were.

He was right.

I made Study in Pink & Black from cut up squares of mat material. I like the simplicity of the material; the alternating pink and black squares, placed checkerboard-style, with simple lines and hints of lines, and the occasional blob of acrylic medium. It’s mounted on black mat, with light clouds of pink enveloping the whole.

Accidentals

This collage on wood panel is somewhat more complicated, with a more diverse array of designs. Again, I used squares of mat board; but I placed them in three layers, creating a piece with more complexity and visual depth.

As I continue growing as an artist, I’m more inclined to be “imperfect” in my work. Things don’t always line up, splotches of paint or acrylic medium aren’t mistakes, they become incorporated into the art and make it more interesting.

This piece moves me more in that direction than anything I have done before.

I hope it speaks to you.

The Power of Limitations

I don’t see some colors very well. I have red-green problems, and cannot distinguish light pink from white.

Therefore I have always been reluctant to use pink.

Judging by the response to the pink in recent work, people like pink. And I like it too, even though I don’t see it the same as those with normal color vision.

I am a little bit like a songwriter who can’t read music (or in my dreams an Irving Berlin, who could only play piano in one key but somehow wrote much of the American Songbook).

As a composer, I found it helpful to embrace limitations. A piece written for a specific group or performance always had those limitations (or, if you prefer, those requirements).

Perhaps a piece could be only so long, have this many performers, playing these particular instruments. Those limitations calmed my mind and let me focus on what was possible within a defined framework.

Defined limitations helped me as a composer. They help me as an artist.

A sense of unlimited possibility is exhilarating. It’s also overwhelming. Many people with creative urges never overcome being overwhelmed.

Working within limits provides relief.

I have a lot of limitations!

Which I also count as blessings.

Have a great summer!