Parade of Delusion

First completed piece of 2022 is here, depicting some version of an event that occurred over a year ago in 2021. This event has obviously been at the forefront of the news lately and, unlike most news these days, has actually kept our attention longer than a week after it was reported. After a whole year passed I felt like I had spent enough time thinking about the events that took place on Jan. 6th, 2021 and some of the motives that pushed people to do what they did, that I could condense my thoughts into an illustration about it. 

A lot of the narrative around this day has been getting twisted over the last year and there is a big attempt by certain news outlets and people to rewrite this day as a peaceful demonstration. A lot of this has made me think about how much of our history is distorted and altered and how a lot of this can be found in iconic works of art. The first image that immediately popped into my head was Jacques-Louis David's painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps and I think it lent itself perfectly as a reference for this to display a false sense of bravery and heroics. Plus, after I read about the horse made of 5G energy appearing on a family's lawn I knew I had to illustrate that in some way.

This piece is me jumping back into a series I started working on during 2020 and have wanted to add to since these days are feeling very similar to the first year of the pandemic before the vaccine became readily available. the uncertainty, anxiety, and confusion is still very much a part of our daily lives and I feel like I have more to add to the series I first started as a way to process my feelings around the pandemic.

 

"Character and Narrative" the Final Four

"Slave to the Booty B.C."

16 X 20"

"LOL"

16 X 20"

"For the Gram"

16 x 20"

"#feltcutemightdeletelater"

16 x 20"

These are the final 4 pieces I made for "Character and Narrative" the group show that Travis Winters, Tom Sarmo, John Van Horn and myself participated in at the Foothills Art Center back in August of 2019. Just getting 3 of the 4 scanned in now due to the tight schedule I was under with wrapping them up; They're slightly larger than I usually work and I had 5 days to complete them before they had to be framed. I've included a couple process pics but due to the 15 hour days huddled over my table, racing against the clock, I don't have much exciting details to show. Nothing like a deadline to get you motivated. 

I think there's a narrative running through all these pieces. I wanted them to create this timeline dealing with our history of vanity, misinterpretation of text and images, instant gratification, and the banal things we do either out of lack of thought, need to be liked or desired, or fear of being out of the loop and how modern life has amplified a lot of these insecurities.