Before the flood

I just finished watching Leonardo DiCaprio's "Before the flood" and I just wonder what is the fucking point of anything?

The impotence and frustration makes me feel so small. And not that I have a problem with that, I'm usually ok with that, there's a video that talks about the Hubble's Deep Field, where the telescope stared into a spot in the universe for eleven days and that also makes me feel incredibly small, but I find that feeling in particular, from that video to be so liberating and relaxing. As in like "oh, it doesn't matter either way, so I might as well do whatever I want", the feeling of nothing inherently mattering that I get from that specifically makes me feel great.

But from this movie. I mean, I think it's great and fucking genius that DiCaprio did this movie, what better way to reach a ton of people than through a movie? Better than music, better than any political channels, a movie is extremely approachable and easy to reach masses with.

I also love that Trent was involved, because he just continues to do things that he cares about and believes in and that is fucking inspiring as shit and he makes me want to do it, too. And the song "A minute to breathe"? I mean, I hadn't watched the movie when I heard it the first time, but it gave me goosebumps and teared me up. I don't hear the song lyrics as a person saying "I just need a minute to breathe", the footage of the video is images of the things that we do to Mother Earth, and I take it was Mother Earth saying "I just need a minute to breathe" and that fucking cuts me deep.

Towards the end of the film this guy with some horrible terminal cancer shows videos of Mother Earth from space and he mentions, as plenty of other people that have been to space, that seeing her from out there is some shit. I haven't, but I don't need to to be moved by Her and feel inconsolable sadness for her. And for us. I'm not sure about the "us" part. Maybe, I don't know. I just don't understand why we do this to ourselves? Why can't we just be fascinated and profoundly respectful of her?

And, it's not like the environment hasn't changed before, that's part of Her life cycle, it's what she does, but why are we the ones doing it? There's this images, not just in this film, of trucks and machines cutting into the dirt from whatever industrial thing, aerial images and it looks orange and it makes me think of us cutting gashes into her.

What do I do?
I mean, I recycle. I have two plants.
I'm not a wholly good person, because that's impossible and delusional, but I just feel like there's nothing I can do and something that I do on my own as a single individual won't do anything to help her.
Before or sometimes it's felt enough to do it for myself, to somehow be a small example, or lead by example, if anybody is watching at all, or just to wash my hands of guilt in that front. Or just because it's what's right.

I don't fucking know.

The movie made me want to do something, but fucking what? And will it even matter?
I find it insane that the bad shit the movie talks about could happen in my lifetime.

So, to me it feels like she's the one saying "I just need a minute to breathe", like she needs us to give her a goddamn break for just a minute. Or like when you feel overwhelmed and you need to take a breath, like you need to breathe before the panic attack comes flooding over everything. Just for a second.

I don't think it ultimately matters either if we disappear, humanity, and I don't think it inherently matters if Mother Earth disappears or we destroy it, either, but I do think that we are a very specific sort of stupid for not respecting her.
I think not respecting that upon which we depend to be a sort of stupid that I don't know what to call or describe. It's repellent, disappointing, saddening. Like when somebody that you deeply trusted lies to you or when somebody that you really care for does something that you cannot forgive, like that sense of loss inside, the feeling of a void inside, it has no name and it's not physical, but it is very present.

The twinkle toe

Finished this drawing today.

I drew from a picture that I found somewhere in the #balletfeet tag here in tumblr, with graphite over some very toothy cold press paper that was seriously ruining my life, because this drawing is so small and I found myself getting really fucking precious with it.
I drew for the duration of the third part of Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon podcast, during which I cried by the way, which is almost four hours, then during the Welcome Oblivion album and then for maybe an hour more today. All this does not include the breaks.

I have a fascination with ballet feet, not so much ballet. Or maybe yes with ballet, I just wouldn’t go to a ballet show, I don’t think, that kind of really doesn’t appeal to me. I am fascinated by the way the feet develop with the ballet training and what they are capable of and how they become like mutant fucking monster feet. How when they curl their toes, the knuckles become so clear and it’s just like somebody clenching a fist, how long the fingers look and how fucked up they get, all knotty.
In my mind, “fucked up” and “monster” do not equate ugly or deformed. For me it’s the same as when I drool over hands that look like they DO shit, working fucked up strong hands.
The body responds when you make it do shit and what the ballet dancers can do with their feet just fucking blows my fucking shit away.
And the drawing is a man’s leg, which is all fine and dandy, but the girls going en pointe, their feet do some whole other shit. I read somewhere the boys go en pointe, too, but its scarce.
I find myself fascinated with everything, the exercises they do for strength of the toes, feet, ankles and legs, the way they prepare their pointe shoes, what they can do in the pointe shoes.

My reference picture, is this incredibly strange and hypnotizing picture of a male leg, barefoot and en pointe, with the toes curled under. I don’t know if they sprayed him with water or covered him in baby oil, but his calf is so strange. I guess the picture by default is phallic, but that medial head of the gastrocnemius makes me think of a penis. Also, that tendon that is sticking out and that cuts the entire picture almost right down the middle is mesmerizing, I think that's the Achilles Tendon, based on where it's going, but I had sure as shit never seen it go that far up the calf. I also know body parts get veiny with development and effort, but I don’t think I’d seen a veiny calf like that. Not that I can remember, anyway.
His skin is waxy looking and the grey background doesn’t help. And the hairs just make it more bizarre for me, although I have nothing against bodily hair.
So here you have both images. First my reference picture and then my drawing, which I titled "The Twinkle Toe".

Trent

For the past five days, I've been making it a point to make a small, quick drawing on paper that I scavenged in my last days at the New York Academy of Art. Shit that people left behind when they moved out of their studios. Some of the paper has been cold press Fabriano Artistico and some of the other, I have no fucking clue. Both kinds are very toothy, not my usual cup of tea.
I have found it surprisingly enjoyable and I've been using it as therapy in a way, to remind myself that I can draw and that I'm ok at it.
I draw for not too long, maybe three hours at most, without including breaks and I've been drawing from pictures that I've saved over time (and I mean fucking years and months) specifically with the purpose of drawing from them at some point. It makes me feel good to draw something just for myself, and this was actually advice given to me by an artist that I seriously respect and admire, named Abhishek Singh, he told me he always says that to his students.

So, yeah, it's been going on for five days, I really enjoy it, I have plenty of material to draw on for now, to keep doing this very hedonistic and satisfactory thing.

I very much enjoy and have enjoyed it since I kind of discovered it at the Academy, this process where, instead of just drawing the image, I kind of look for it, whilst I draw. Actually, I would say that I learned this mostly through a classmate: Matthew Comeau. This guy just beats the shit out of the paper and I remember looking at him and just being hypnotized.
It took me having a shitty midterm critique, when the winter break started, going into the last semester for me to try something like that and that's when "Lipring" happened, which I think is the first drawing where I tried that process and it was incredibly liberating.

So, I try to emulate something like that in these drawings and almost whenever I start a drawing now, basically. The drawing now is more like a search and a study and I draw until I find what I want to see. Erasing, correcting and drawing again, it is an incredibly enjoyable process.
Come to think of it, I think Dan Thompson's drawing is also a similar endeavor, so he definitely deserves some cred, too.

The last drawing I did, which was yesterday, is a drawing of Trent. Here you can see my reference picture and then the drawing.
The drawings that I've been making, I haven't really been meaning to copy the picture, just have it as reference and take things from the picture that I like: composition, lighting, features. That's why the drawings are based off of the pictures. With this one, though, I kept going back and forth and I couldn't decide if I wanted to copy it or not, I mean, it's Trent, why the fuck wouldn't I want to draw him and his beautiful face.

So, as you can see, my drawing is actually quite far from the picture, but I feel like it looks more "like" him than my reference.
And that stare and the facial expression in general, I like to think that's how he would look at me if I was drawing him in real life.
Or that it's the look I'd get before kissing him. Shy and serene. The drawing makes me think a lot of some pictures that I've seen of him and his wife that are taken very close to their faces and the pictures are very intimate, it's like my face is right in there with theirs and I can feel their warmth on my own skin.
These pictures ruin my life, obv.
They just resonate deeply, I guess. When I've been that close with a lover and I can smell his breath and we talk to each other with our heads really close, and I can feel his sandpaper skin versus the skin of the lips on my own face's skin and lips, and when you get close to kiss, their nose gets buried in your cheek. *SIGH*
So, the drawing makes me think all that shit and it makes me feel like this gif of Aladdin.

Milla + Johnny

So, I drew this yesterday afternoon, whilst I listened to The Fragile, so it is about two hours of work and this does not include breaks, which were a lot.

The way that I’ve been working almost since I started at the Academy, is working 20 minutes and breaking 10 minutes. It’s based off of the Pomodoro method, although, as I understand, the breaks in the Pomodoro method are 5 minutes, but that’s not enough for me. I get fucking ridiculous amounts of work done this way.

I drew with graphite over some mystery paper that I scavenged at the Academy. It is way thick and toothy.

I used a picture of Milla Jovovich as my reference, it’s similar in the crop and composition, where the head is centered and cut at the top of the head and chin. It is ridiculously photoshopped, obviously. In this case, though, they completely changed Milla’s nose, they made it shorter, changed the tip to really straight and small. And I’m pretty sure they fucked with the ear that is in light, too, it looks like a cartoon ear.
The picture being so modified made me want to screw it up in my drawing, which I didn’t really screw up that much, but that person looks like a meth addict in comparison to the doll mask in my reference. I kind of really wanted to make hooded eyes and remark the upper and lower lids and their positions in reference to each other and placement in the face.
There is also some marking of the eye socket and cheekbone - zygomatic arch, some very slight frowning. It kinda looks like a snarl around the nose.
And I kinda wanted a more relaxed expression of the mouth, like when you stare off into space and the lips separate a bit. In my reference, she’s about to say something or in the middle of saying something. I remarked the node on the side of the lip that is in light and I tried to maintain that poutiness from Milla’s mouth, with the philtrum and sulcus under the lower lip.

Ditched the ears, because I don’t give a fuck about ears.

The end result, reminds me a freaking ton of Johnny Depp. With his tiny little mouth and pronounced cupid’s bow. There’s something in the pointy eyebrows and the stare and the sharpness of the features.

Sometime last year, I was commissioned to do a portrait of a girl and all the pictures I had as reference, which all happened to be selfies, just had nothing on her face. I don't know if there were filters, probably, but there was just nothing on her face and I was very annoyed drawing her, because there was just nothing there. It was like looking at pictures in any woman's magazine of your choice. Lately, whenever I happen to stumble upon one such magazine, it just SCREAMS at me.
Maybe it's because of all the anatomy I've learned and will continue to learn, on top of knowing that every single fucking picture is shamelessly photoshopped.
It makes me incredibly sad and depressed how many viewers and readers allow themselves to be fooled and we continue to fuel the photoshop industry by believing them and continue to buy their magazines.
I think I haven't bought that type of magazine in years and years.
And I love how they pretend to leave pores and the same pattern of skin fuzz or lines by using the clone tool (I think that's what it's called).
I want to draw and see faces with expression lines and cheekbones and wrinkles on the lips and eye sockets, frown lines, like that face has fucking BEEN THROUGH something in life, goddammit. Crying, laughing, thinking, wondering, yelling, anger, sadness and all that shit. Lately I have found myself really like the lines that are just outside the lips, I find them way sexy and I like seeing them on myself, too. And my frown, I fucking love my frown, the lines and the muscles.
Anyway, enough sucking my own dick and ranting.

Sisters

Yesterday, i started this drawing. I'm working with charcoal over a 30 x 44" stonehenge sheet. The drawing has a similar flavor to "P.O.V.". 

With the drawings that i've been making since "lipring", i've been seeking to reproduce the feeling that i had whilst making that drawing. A feeling of freedom and carelessness, no fear. No fear of "making mistakes" in the drawing, drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing over and over again.

It feels like a study, where i discover the right place of things, rather than being scared of not getting it right the first time. It's meditative and thoughtful, impulsive, instinctive, angry.

Since "lipring" i've been making self portraits where my face is deformed somehow. It's something to do with the image of myself, self image, how i'm supposed to look for those who look upon me. I don't want to care about that anymore, so with the drawigs i feel like i'm rebelling against that. 

This new drawing, with my references, i wanted there to be rolls on my body. This time, i want to deform my body.

Among other things, the drawing is still about physical violence. They're going to be a diptych, this one's the back and the other one will be the front. In my mind, i'm referring to them as the sisters.

Llouvset

So, the New York Academy of Art is doing a collaboration of sorts with (t)here Magazine, in that the magazine is going to dedicate an entire issue to the Academy and what they do with artists that they show in their magazine, is that they assign the artist a theme or subject on which the artwork will be based and, regardless of the result, it's going to show in the magazine. I thought it was pretty cool, when they were explaining to us, that there is no curating of the work, they just show everything that results from the work made.

So, I'm participating in this shebang and it went similar to what happened for Conexión Drácula, which is that residency that I did back in Panama. The people from the magazine had us choose in a lottery type of thing the theme that our work would be about, I got "consume". And I loved/love the shit out of that.

With the drawing that I did to represent "consume" I wanted to see part of what I feel when I really like somebody in that very serious sexy way. I wish that I could somehow ingest them, always have them in me and be a part of me, similar to when I consume food. Thoughts that I've had before with music, too, if I could somehow liquefy Nine Inch Nails and drink it or inject it into my veins.
Or how I want to be closer to that person, if I could bury my head deeper into their chest, hold them close and hard enough that I could melt into their body. If I could be inside them and them inside me at the same time. How that other person makes me feel so warm that I think I might catch on fire.
So the two people in the drawing are having that sort of ecstatic, physically impossible experience. Their fingers are beginning to sink into each other's bodies, the skin around the fingers ripple like water, he opens his mouth as if about to take a bite out of her face, he smushes his face against hers and her face also gets smushed. His eyes are closed and her eyes are half open, mouth half open, she's going to close her eyes soon and they're going to get lost, there's only going to be feelings and they will disappear.
I didn't concern myself too much to make them look "like a man" or "like a woman", in my mind, by default, it's a man and a woman even if both bodies are very muscular and dude like. The title for this entry is the words "love" and "lust" with the letters staggered and I kind of thought the title of the drawing would be the same, but when I titled the drawing, I just titled it "Consume".

Mother

In this entry, I want to gush a little bit over a specific piece of work by colleague Joshua Henderson. The work is done in Carrara marble, titled "Mother" and I don't think it has that super clean, cleanliness is next to godliness kind of finish that you see in the really "important" and famous marble pieces by the masters, but I also think that's one of the things that makes it so hypnotizing. I think it's one of the things that makes it so that when I'm looking at it, I can't take my eyes off.

So, this entry will be longwinded and nonsensical, because I just think of a lot of things when I look at the sculpture.
"Mother" is covered in a really heavy looking comforter/sheet that is made out of fabric that I'm not familiar with at all. It's thick. It reminds me of when I've somehow managed to get myself tangled in my bedsheets at night and I try to pry free in the morning.
The sheets are leather, suede and velvet, all in one material, there's yards and yards of it, she's stepping on it and if a person had that much fabric around their feet in real life, they would probably stumble on it and fall.
She's incredibly sinuous and slick, she's flowing, feminine, bodacious and rhythmic, but somehow she's also incredibly still and peaceful. Her impassive, resting face shows through a crack in the fabric and makes me wish that I was that placid and unburdened. There is a contrast between the leather/velvet material that covers her and the tilted head with closed eyes. The fabric drapes over her and suggests the curves of her female body, it is a rigid and unforgiving shell that weighs her down, but she seems to shyly and determinedly try to take a step forward, with her hands held together in front of her. The tiny opening in the fabric and her imperturbable facial expression is like a natural process, a creature going through a transformation, transmutation or metamorphosis and she begins to come out the other end: a snake shedding its skin or a caterpillar coming out a butterfly, but this rock does it without a single drop of effort. The shell subsides all on its own, making way for the new figure.

To me, it seems as though the piece is a rock formation, more than stone that was lovingly and thoughtfully sculpted into shape.
Looking at it and remembering that it is a solid piece of rock is kind of difficult and confusing, because she looks so soft and diaphanous.
There is also something about transformation in the piece, with how the texture of her changes from the back to the front, she's rougher in the back and progressively gets smoother as you go to her front.

Joshua is a colleague at the New York Academy of Art, a Sculpture Major taking the anatomy track.
Here you have some fun pictures that I took of her.

Demon

Yesterday, I printed my third limestone lithography. I don't really know if I'm using the correct terms for things, like, I don't know what the name of a copy is. A lithography? Fucked if I know.

Either way, this last one that I printed yesterday, a total of 18 copies came out, one of them is mine, 6 are proofs and the other ones are "official" copies. That's another thing that I don't know what it's called. I know how to sign and number them, though, not completely ignorant.
Either way, I'm learning.
I really like the stone, don't know why. I think maybe, because by the time that I got to it, I became more familiar with the whole process, which is tedious as fucking shit. When this class started, we worked over aluminum plates, which made me want to rip my tits out. Trying to get that done made me realize that when I go to hell, they will have me making aluminum plate lithography.

I was really excited to print this one, I seriously fucking love the drawing. I freehanded it over the stone, where erasing is a pain in the ass, just like everything else. You can't just draw and erase like when you're working on paper.
So, I freehanded the drawing, based on a picture that I took of myself wearing a beanie that has horns/ears. Everybody said they were horns and I got a kick out of that.
Printing him was more troublesome than the previous two lithographs and I think it's because I didn't care for those as much as I care about this one. I love the shit out of this drawing and I wanted it to be perfect, I was getting all picky about the stainy shit on it, smudges, scumming. The proofs on newspaper came out pristine, but when I put in the Stonehenge, shit started to happen.
And I was amused, because, we're talking about a demon, after all, they're not known for being nice or whatever. So when I had like seven or ten copies total printed out and each time I got annoyed when another defective one came out, it was like a crowd of these incredibly sexy eyes were staring at me mockingly. Specially, with that little smile he has. It's like he's thinking "of course this copy you just did sucks, you're not really good at this at all". That little, incredibly good looking bastard.

So this drawing, I don't consider it a self-portrait, everything turned out quite different from my own face, so I don't really recognize myself in it. The nose, lip ring and split chin, maybe, but I find the face to be very masculine, so, as far as I'm concerned, it's an incredibly good looking male demon that is staring out at me. And I like that much much much more.
Unembarrassed, honest, unwavering, piercing and daring stares are good when they come from a pair of eyes like those.
If that really was me, though, it wouldn't be an ambiguous thing, like it was before. The women and self portraits that I used to draw before, were part of how I was brainwashed to think that I was supposed to be as a woman: Tempting, threatening, inviting, mysterious. Like, you look at her and she's irresistible, but she might destroy you. That ambiguity and mystery is what really calls your attention to her. Or something.
If that was me now, you could still think that shit, but what I see in those eyes and if I looked at somebody like that, there would be nothing but the ulterior motive of hurt and pain in them and how much I'm going to enjoy giving hurt and pain. The forehead, more than the eyes, are what face you, it's like a bull charging at you with all its anger.

You can see whatever you want. I like it being a male demon giving me an incredibly seductive and sexy look.

So here is a scan of the print. I printed them at 8 x 12" over Stonehenge paper.

Dan Thompson

Today, i sat for the second time for teacher Dan Thompson. This head study that I'm posting happened in about ten hours total of work.

I serendipitously stumbled on the existence of this incredible artist and teacher in my first semester at the New York Academy of Art. My first day of class, and all classes with him after that, were incredibly mentally exhausting and demanding in the way that really good things are exhausting and demanding. Dan has completely ruined me for all future teachers, because everyone of them just gets compared to him.

Anyway, this entry is really more about him as an artist and his work.  I don't know if you can tell, but i'm a pretty big fan of this dude and i have no problem gushing over him.

In his studio, i had the opportunity to see his absolutely most recent work, which just happens to be breathtaking.

There is a quality of arbitrarity in the brushstrokes, in the sense that they don't seem to follow something. For example, in the case of Van Gogh's brushstrokes, they follow some kind of current, they're water in a flowing river.

Dan's finished paintings fidget and move, like a five year old that refuses to sit still and, perhaps, it is that path that the brushstrokes follow. The inherent movement that is constant in a living body, the movement of homeostasis, of blood moving through veins, arteries and capillaries, of air being inhaled and exhaled, of cells making energy and consuming fuel. Movement of molecules.

It's movement that is not obvious to human eyes, movement that we take for granted or annoys us when a picture we take comes out blurry, because of our shaking hands.

I think a facile way of describing his work would be "impressionistic" and, although valid, i also think it is so much deeper than that. The study of light and color is there, no doubt, as it was with the impressionists, but there is something about the lines of the beginning sketch, like in the study that I am posting in this entry, the swirly strokes that escape from the hair. It reminds me of fugitive atoms.

I love how everything is there and it is not, how far from "tight" and "rendered" it is. And i also love how when you get close, the strokes don't crumble and fall away from each other, but, rather, the paint tickens and seems to reach out to you.

So, i feel pretty goddamn cool and ridiculously honored that i posed for this BAMF.

You can see his work in his website www.danthompsonart.com and he also has a facebook page (Dan Thompson) and he is also going to do a workshop from april 18th to april 20th at Chelsea's Studio and Gallery. Write to chelseas.artists@gmail.com or call 516-297-6527.

The Endless

Today, I finished three drawings of my favorite Endless, from Neil Gaiman's the Sandman comic.
I think I only have the first compilation of Sandman comics, Preludes and Nocturnes, and I've kind of laid off comics for a really long time, because they do nothing but frustrate me with their stupid open endings and "to be continued". I know that I like the Sandman, I knew that I was going to like it, I knew that I would like it before I ever started reading it. I don't really know how to explain that I like the Sandman comic almost by default, before I opened the first comic book.
During the winter break, I catsat for friends that have most of the series. Again, I knew that I was going to like it, but I didn't know that I was going to lose my shit over it.
I became completely infatuated, and it was helpful that Morpheus reminds me of Trent, definitely. I fell in love with him and every time I went to catsit, I would read two of the compilations (the owners knew this), and it was like going to see my lover, I was going on a date. Towards the end, I noticed that they were missing the last two issues and I went on a really bad trip and just stopped spending time at their place, because it was like I'd broken up with a guy that I really liked and I didn't want to be there anymore. And there was a nostalgia and a feeling of lacking when I went again, because my insides wanted to sit down and read more, but there was no more to read. It was confusing and it made me sad.
Morpheus kept reminding me of Trent, because he's usually top lit, with the scraggly, messy hair, scrawny like Trent used to be, back in the Downward Spiral days. He is freaking adorable.
So, my first impulse was definitely to draw Morpheus and I picked a picture of Trent that has something to do with the Downward spiral, but I don't know what it is the cover of. I have it labelled as "trent insect", because that's what his eyes remind me of.
I got quite frustrated with the stories in which Morpheus doesn't show up and he's only vaguely related to them. I love how charming and polite he is. It's like I have a legit crush on this dude, I'm blinded most of the time to how proud and stubborn he is. He was the first drawing that I did.
I have very little concern about his appearance when I look at the drawing, because I know that it turned out fucking perfect. I look at him and his twin star eyes and I feel like I could dive into him and kiss him.
Neil describes his eyes as "pools of night" and "twin stars", which is so beautiful and romantic, and I wish I had a lover with such eyes and he could look at me with them.

I don't know, really, why in particular I decided to draw Death. She is definitely way too cool and chill for me. Neil Gaiman said that there is a cabbalah story about death that says it is such a beautiful creature and you fall in love so hard and so fast that your soul comes out of your eyes. He said he didn't want a Death who agonized over her role, or who took a grim delight in her job, or who didn't care. He wanted a Death that he would like to meet in the end. Someone who would care. Like her. In the wikipedia article, she is described as: "pleasant, down-to-earth, perky". So for my drawing, I wanted her to be warmly and intimately looking at the viewer and smiling. I wanted the smile to be a Milla sort of smile, a smile that you give a person with whom you keep a secret and only both of you know, a smile that says you trust them and you're together in whatever it is. Because of the nature of said smile, there should be some mischief in it, so hopefully there is a little of that, too.

Desire was the most difficult and elusive one. I did two bust drawings of him, before I realized that a bust drawing would break what I had going with Death and Dream, because those two are close ups of faces. So I had to look for a face and a facial expression that I felt suited Desire. I also kept confusing him with pleasure, because I guess he just comes off as hedonistic and capricious to me, and that is also why I guess I liked the idea of making a self portrait out of him.
Also, I know that Desire is neither and both male and female, but I think of him as him. He's a very beautiful boy, one of those model types, with whose beauty I cannot deal with and makes me uncomfortable. I think that's why I ended up with Milla as my reference and I also think that she would be fucking perfect to be him in a movie.
Neil's description (one of the descriptions, anyway) of Desire in the comic is as follows: "Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And there is much else that is knife-like about Desire. Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin pale as smoke and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything."
The line: "Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge", I think might have been what did it for me.
So, Desire looks down at us, with disdain and condescension, parted fleshy, pillowy, inviting lips, half closed ochre eyes, a hedonistic molasses feeling about him.

So here they are.
Death: Dream: Desire:

Automata

Today, I finished this drawing, titled "Automata". It is a strange 8 x 8" drawing, that I did with a Tombow B pencil over Fabriano paper that I mounted on canvas.
Probably one of the strangest things about her is the lack of eyebrows, or the apparent lack of eyebrows, because I purposefully cut her face off there. This is some of the work at which I concluded last semester, with my research work, it's actually part of a polyptych of sorts, because it's five drawings that hang on a board.
The drawings are all parts of the female body and the group is titled "Die Puppe" ("The Doll"), because I found myself emulating Hans Bellmer, in a way, but I'll get to that eventually. Not in this entry.
Of "Automata" as an individual drawing, while I was working on her, I wrote something down, thoughts that I had whilst I worked on her.
"Automata's eyes decidedly stare out at me
maybe demanding
maybe pleading
maybe impassive and imperturbable
maybe with curiosity
but they definitely stare
She stares out of the window of paper and canvas that I cut out for her
Her perfect and unaltered features, although still and peaceful, look to be on the verge on panic
Flawlessly graded shadows in valleys and mountains
delicate lines sculpt her in the paper
The cracks of her lips begin cutting into her face
exaggerated grooves make it seem like they're painfully dry and as though they will break and bleed at the slightest gesture
And so she keeps her entire face unwaveringly still"

Modified Storage Space

I finished this painting maybe a month ago, it was part of some research work I was doing for what I thought would be my thesis.
Sometime last year I "awoke" from a lifetime of being a brainwashed woman. Before I got to New York, I was in a relationship of sorts with a guy that liked slapping and hair pulling in bed, which is fine, but I'm not into that shit and he kept doing it, even though I asked him not to and, for whatever reason that I just haven't figured out, I didn't defend myself when he would do it again and didn't say anything again.
He wouldn't do it every time we had sex, but I didn't know wether he'd do it or not.
I think part of not defending myself might have been fear of what would happen if I did defend myself, after all, it is said over and over again, that no matter what, men are always stronger than women. So is there even really a point to even try to defend myself?
So, I'm just blaming it on brainwashing.
There are many other things that I didn't like about having sex with this guy, he hardly ever kissed me and, when he did kiss me, I wasn't a fan of the way he kissed me either; there was hardly ever foreplay, so when he got his boner, he'd just put some spit on my cunt and penetrate me. And it was painful.
I have what I think is pretty good pain tolerance, I obviously have no gauge with which to measure, nobody does, but I like to think that I tolerate pain well enough. Pain usually makes me really angry, but whenever there was pain during sex, I felt like I was obligated to just take it. So I did the great majority of the time, with this dude and whatever other dude.
I had this image of myself that I thought I was supposed to be as a female, an idea that I thought I liked, a "temptress", "seductress", "always willing", impassive and insatiable witch.
And upon reading a book called "El Cuerpo en Venta" by Juan Carlos Pérez Gauli, all my shit was put in the fucking blender.
The book talks about the relationship between art and advertising and how the female body has been used in both throughout history. It also talks about how women and nature are put in relationship to each other, because they are both things that are mysterious to men and have so to be dominated by man. Or some shit like that, the book depressed the living fuck out me.
I don't remember everything, but it obligated me to reconsider a lot of things about myself that I thought to be true. So this dude that liked slapping and hair pulling and the things in the book, just put this idea in me and that shit snowballed and I wanted to make images that dealt with how I've been treated and how I'm still treated by men and others. I don't know who "others" are, but it's definitely not just the men. And it's also not all men. The whole sexism issue is something that affects everyone, but the research work was meant to help me convey how it feels for me. I can't speak for anyone else, now can I?
So, anyway.
I mean, I was aware of feminism and sexism, but I just didn't know how deep it went. To look at another human and see an object is all kinds of fucked up, it's absurd, but that's exactly what happens.
I read somewhere a comment full of hate about how women are seen as nothing but a hole in which men put their dicks. And I saw an illustration once, of a woman with a bull's head and she had the dotted lines of cuts of cow meat.
Why do we have to treat each other this way?
So, I made a painting of a vulva, titled "Storage Space" and this painting that you see here, titled "Modified Storage Space".
As usual, the work becomes more, sort of, as I work on it. And this painting started out with only the two cuts on the side of her mouth, as if somebody wanted to make her mouth open farther. I'm not sure if that would work, but clearly whoever is torturing her doesn't care.
Afterwards, it became that she had more scars on top of the scars of the cuts on the side of her mouth, her skin is also surprisingly good at healing, so her abuser kept hurting her.
Also, when I first started it, her lips were pretty relaxed, it could have been any mouth, party open, the person is distracted or something. But as I painted her more, she started looking like she's just about to grimace in pain or like she's just about to start crying again.
After a while of telling other people what I was working on, it kept feeling more and more like I was victimizing myself and trying to get pity from somebody, so I laid off all that shit and the work changed. So, I'll post about that some other time, but this is a little painting that I really like and I enjoyed painting it. I find it an incredibly beautiful image and I love the Dioxazine Purple with which I painted her and how the purple coming from the sides of her neck look like they're going to engulf her and the entire image and maybe that's why she's so afraid.

Plague (Reprise)

This entry might come off as disgusting. Don't curr.

I'm writing this entry as a reprise, like they do in songs, because I was hesitant about writing this in the first entry. This is what I wanted to accompany "Plague" with, in my mind, these thoughts are what accompany "Plague".
They're thoughts that came during the making of the piece. Originally, I think I wanted to do the image, because I liked how my jawbone looked on the sides of my face in that specific position and top lit, maybe I'll remember what it was that I wanted to do from the beginning eventually.

So, I'm going to write out what I wrote in my journal and I'll add other things that I also didn't add into the journal entry as notes, either, 'cuz I thought those things would come off as even more disgusting.

Sometimes, I have the desire to burst and explode
Sometimes, feelings seem to be a substance or a being in their own right, they are trying to break free from my rib cage
I'm a big fan of singing and I have serious admiration for singers that I perceive sing sincerely
I find that singing perhaps is the most honest form of output, it seems somehow as the most direct and the most untarnished
You inhale air, it occupies your chest and you push it out through your vocal chords and nose and if you do it appropriately, it's your feelings that come out
So, as far as one putting out one's insides in the truest way, singing is a beautiful way of doing it
I don't know exactly how it is linked with vomiting, because it certainly isn't the same
I haven't vomited many times in my life
Some of the last times that it happened, it was on somebody's bathroom floor, I might have urinated myself simultaneously.
One other time, I was at the tail end of my period, but the contraction of my abdomen pushed a couple of droplets of blood out and onto the floor and my host cleaned it. Both times, I rinsed myself and we continued to have a good time. It actually might have happened the same night, where I started out with my head in the toilet and moved to the shower, because I was peeing myself. I don't really remember.
This happened as a consequence of roofies (GHB) and alcohol.
I remember being amused at the position I found myself in, when I pissed myself.
I was on all fours, on the shower floor, I thought of how rockstars probably go through similar things and possibly even more disgusting, involving shit sometimes (I heard a recording once, of Trent talking about having to take a shit and not having a bathroom and how him and his musicians had to shit into bags and whatever, I didn't have the patience to hear the whole thing) and other bodily fluids.
So, I was in this situation, where I had no control over what my body was doing, except smiling to myself, because I felt so rock and roll. And because it felt so decadent and destructive and nihilistic. At the time, I was also in the middle of a relationship with a guy in which I had a lot of fun and also a lot of very unsavory moments and situations.
Puking and pissing myself at the same time on all fours on his shower floor was not one of the unsavory moments. I haven't figured out yet what it is that I find so appealing about self destruction and just going out and getting really fucked up and shit faced, I just get in that mood sometimes. Most of the time, I'm 180 degrees from that and I take pretty good care of myself.
But, anyway, my abdomen spasmed, pushing whatever it was out.
Vomiting requires a lot of effort, effort over which you have no say, your body takes control of itself without you having a grasp of anything and, in that sense, it's pretty cool. Your body makes this effort for you, it doesn't matter at all if you have the physical or mental energy to do it.
I guess I see some kind of relationship to singing, because it's a situation in which something is coming directly out of the body. In that way, they are both visceral and raw and it doesn't get more honest than that. So for "Plague", I guess, there is something of that happening.
I don't know what "that" is. Do I think there is some sort of evil in me and I'm releasing it to the world? No. Is there something inside me I want to get rid of? Sometimes.
I certainly don't picture the overwhelming feelings that I have in my chest sometimes that way. I picture that specifically as an explosion, not something that makes its way out through my orifices.
"Plague" is kind of a disgusting painting, the texture that the mussels makes is nasty and for a fleeting moment when I've looked at it before, whilst working on it, they looked like the carapaces of roaches. And a lot of people that have looked at the image, think the same thing.
The piece has gotten reactions of "oh, this is intense" or "oh, this is disgusting", I love all the reactions. I love the entire image. As I was musing in the previous entry, I hear some kind of rumbling sound when I look at her, I also hear the retching, she frowns involuntarily at the effort of vomiting the plague out. She is in the middle of a maelstrom, formed by a viscous substance and the plague that is coming out of her.
Sometimes, I feel (or maybe more correct is "I remember") the mussels coming out of my own mouth. I remember vomiting and my abdomen contracted so tight from puking, I remember how tiring it is. I remember the bitter and horrible taste of stomach acid, mixed with morsels of half digested food, out of my mouth, burning my throat and larynx like it was sand paper on the tissue of my insides. It's kind of like a tsunami from within.

Plague

Today, I finished this self portrait titled "Plague".
As usual, I don't really know where the image came from, but at the same time, they kind of "form" themselves as I make them, which is cool. I think sometimes that the work I make is kind of isolated panels from comics and I imagine the story as I advance in the piece, which is cool.
Sometimes they acquire a very deep meaning to me and they become really personal or they're personal from the beginning.
So anyway.
Towards the end of this painting, I really liked how she kind of became this creature that seems to be making an incredible effort to get rid of whatever she is vomiting. People that have seen it are reminded of Neptune or some kind of sea creature, I imagine it's because of the blue.
To me, she's not necessarily good or evil, she is doing a lot of effort to vomit this substance out of her body. The painting moves a little bit, it sounds like a rumble, it looks kind of like a tornado. She makes the retching sound, I can kind of feel the mussles coming out of my own throat. I feel what I feel the few times that I've puked in my life: my torso curving against my will, my abdomen contracting, my throat hurts.

The piece is done over wood panel, I drew first, then glued a bunch of mussles, then put on some blue acrylic paint, then some clear gesso, then painted with prussian blue and payne's grey.

Drawing from death

In this entry, I will use the word "beautiful" a lot and generally ramble a ton.
Last semester, I had class with Michael Grimaldi for the first time and I also had class with Dan Thompson where he would do a lecture in the first part of the class, using pictures from actual dissections.
Several people squirmed and mumbled during Dan's lectures and it made me very annoyed and sad, and it also made me think about stuff.
I didn't understand what was so disgusting about the human body and being able to see it beyond the skin, if anything, it became even more beautiful. I thought about how poorly we are taught about death and it made me wish we were taught differently about it, it doesn't have to be a sad, horrible thing. It made me think how beautiful nature is in life and in death.
So I gushed about these thoughts and things I couldn't keep to myself to Dan and Michael and, one time after class, Michael was talking about this Advanced Artistic Anatomy that he does in Philadelphia, where him and the class study and draw from cadavers and I asked him to please let me know when he did it again. And he did.
He sent an email with information about the class, about how the smell of formaldehyde can be a bit much sometimes, but you get used to it, and how you get used to the sounds and the bodies themselves and how I got the email, because I showed interest and some maturity to be in the class.

The experience is and isn't what I'd expected.
The class is every Friday for the fall semester, I love that it's just another class for me, I just happen to not be taking it from my school. Fridays are entirely invested in this study.
I didn't expect myself to react so sensitively. The smell of formaldehyde is the least of my issues.
The first body that we saw was an old woman that was lying face down and her body was pretty mangled, her back had been cut open and her trapezius and rhomboid muscles had been cut already. I think also her latissimus dorsi had been cut and a section of her vertebras had been cut to reveal the spinal chord (I actually saw how they did this in another cadaver yesterday).
I wasn't particularly surprised with this one, because it didn't look like a person. It looked like some kind of mannequin, it looks very fake, like what they would use in a horror/gore movie and the muscles reminded me of meat and beef jerky. Maybe a strange moment was then I saw the back of her head, her scalp and hair, that reminded me that she was a person.

The next cadaver we saw was this beautiful, slender and tall man, he had very little body fat, his skin looked lik leather, it wasn't discolored, his muscles were tight and clean. He was face down and they turned him over and I saw his face and, suddenly, this dude looked like a person and I felt pretty bad. I think if I'd have looked at his face long enough, I would have cried. While we were looking at him and talking about him, sometimes kind of wanted to hold his hand, it was strange. Still is, because there is a curious feeling of fondness towards him, I've drawn his hands several times now.

For a while after the first class and during the first class, I got to thinking about bunch of stuff. I wonder, still, if we are sick to want to study out own bodies from fellow deceased humans? I wonder if it dehumanizes us, if it makes us feel less empathy about ourselves? Or am I really aware that that is a corpse and that it's going to be me one of these days?
I feel so alive, that it's difficult for me to think that I'm going to die some day.
Are the bodies we are studying the same as objects now? What makes a body not an object is the life that is in it, so if there is no such life in it anymore, is it really just a mound of meat now?
I know that I am meat and bone and guts, because I'm aware that that is what is inside my flesh, I know that is what other fellow animals are.
It is so strange to me to visualize the two opposite sides of the spectrum meeting, the living and the dead interacting.
I know that different animals deal with their dead in their own way, some don't give a shit, some others take them back to where they live and then eat them or whatever the fuck. God knows us humans have a slew of ways to deal with our dead, I guess studying ourselves in this way, is one of the ways to do it.

What I did expect, and continue to expect, is the absolute fascination that I feel whenever I see the bodies. I'd never seen tendons, I'm not counting this kind of stuff from the meat and animals we eat although it's the same shit, I'd never observed muscle fiber, I'd never listened to what knocking on a naked rib cage would sound like. I'd never listened to a chisel sinking into vertebra, I'd never pulled on the tendons on the forearm. It's all so specific that I think, even without having seen or listened to these things, I'd have known what it was. And pulling on the tendons of the forearm, although dry and rigid, the slight response of the fingers reverts them back to alive and human.
The muscle underneath the skin, the wires and ropes that tightly bind our bodies together over bone, it is all such a beautiful construction. One of the first things I remember thinking how delicate and pristine it was, was the illiocostalis and longissimus muscles that ride the middle of the back, along the sides of the spine, up to the neck and head. Tiny and fragile looking tendons branch out to hold on to other muscle and do whatever movement they do.
The anterior ribcage, with the sternum, looks like a facehugger, kind of, with each of the ribs slightly changing angle as they go down, like spider's legs.
I wonder, seeing the design in nature and seeing the design in our bodies, I wonder why everything that humans build is only straight lines? There are no straight lines in nature, but curves, like in our bodies and in nature, are definitely better design and more resistant.
Bones are far from straight, there are slight curves that makes them better for taking weight, because if they were straight, they would break under the pressure.
Tendons and muscle make me think of the ropes on a sailboat, you pull on them to make the sail taught and firm. Likewise, tendons and muscle pull on each other and on bones to cause firmness and movement.
Everything about the design of the human body makes sense, although it seems arbitrary, everything makes sense and is useful and doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. This makes me even more sad when I see how much we hate on our bodies, with all the magazines and people that like to talk down on the human body, looking for ways to make it "look better" rather than doing things to take care of our vessel.

At first, when I drew, I had no idea what to do. There is so much information, there's so much stringy shit, so much tissue everywhere, muscle fibers that have been torn, that I didn't and still don't for the most part know what to do, but I am learning and I expect myself to learn much more.
Yesterday, I experimented a little bit with chalk and it was helpful to draw with a big section of chalk to kind of explore the form of a muscle. So, in these pictures you can see my ID card and the drawing book on which I'll draw throughout the entire semester some of the first drawings I did in the class and the last colored one is with chalk. Also, the three drawings of hands are of that same guy that impressed me so much, because he still looks like a person.

Testa

Today I'm going to leave alone this drawing that I started, based on a sculpture by Christian Zucconi. I saw the image originally posted in Facebook by Hi-Fructose magazine.
I saw it and I fell in love.
I was/am very drawn to the facial expression, the mouth hanging open, like when you come out of the dentist and have been injected with anesthesia. His eyes seem to be swollen, he looks uncomfortable, he looks sideways. One of the sides of his mouth continues onto his cheek and jaw. And I also find his zygomatic bones to be incredibly beautiful.
I find the whole thing, beautiful, really, I would love to see it in person. His nose is also very strong looking, but it has this uneven crack going down the middle of it.
This series of Zucconi's work is meant to explore the fragility of the human body and its ability to heal over and over again. To convey that, he sculpts, then he destroys the sculpture and then he puts it back together, with the mended parts showing obviously. And the end result is hypnotizing.
Here is the sculpture that I'm referencing in my drawing and another one that I really like, that I would like to draw at some point, also.

And this is my drawing. I don't think my intention was to copy the sculpture, I don't remember with what intention I started drawing the sculpture, really, but I love how it's turned out. Sometimes, it seems like my drawing is kind of smiling, even though he doesn't mean to, because he is definitely not comfortable, either, whatever is happening to him. I worked with a Zebra ballpoint pen over Strathmore paper.

Albino Witch

I think I might have mentioned before that I'm a fan of overhead lighting, or maybe it was in a video. I think it was in a video that I talked about how I liked that kind of lighting.

I have, however, an issue when it comes to drawing overhead lighting, because I like smooth degradation of shadows, it's hard for me to just draw from my head. The parts which should be really strong and crude puddles of shadow, like the eye sockets, under the nose and under the zygomatic arches, I haven't been able to bring myself to mark them enough. The time that I think I've been most successful at it, is when I drew the Ice Cream Heads, I had specific reference pictures for those and even then, it was still difficult to do what I had to do.
I like overhead lighting, because it really marks the valleys and mountains of the face. More frontal lighting seems to just flatten out features and it really is the kind of lighting that is seen for advertising or illustration or really graphic shit.
Stronger lighting is used, apparently, when "dark" things want to be conveyed.
I love being able to see the eyes covered by the brow bone, the nasolabial fold marking a path from the nose to the sides of the lips, the diagonal from the zygomatic arches to the top lip, the nose hovering farthest out from the face. It's a thing of beauty. Features are feared and so are wrinkles and anything, I think, that really marks a human face.

So, this drawing, which I've titled "Albino Witch", is meant to be top lit. It's understood that it's some kind of subtle overhead lighting, like she is coming out of some shadows. Her eyebrows and hair are meant to be platinum, like somebody with albinism and, in my mind, her eyes are an almost white light blue. The way that Goldie Hawn's eyes looked in "Death Becomes Her" towards the end of the movie.
The witch looks beyond us, she seems fascinated by what she has her eyes on, her lips are slightly separated.

are correct.

Oral Fixation

The definition of Oral Fixation is hazy, in my personal opinion. Before I started looking for what it might mean, I sort of had a definition for it, or an idea of what it meant in my mind: it meant like there is some sort of focus around the oral cavity, an unintended gravitation towards it. Lately, I've been a bit more curious about why I center my attention around certain things, I think it might be because I'm in art school and I want to be able to talk about my work in a way that makes sense, I want to be able to articulate. Or maybe I just want to be able to verbalize things for myself. I've been wary of looking too much into things, because I feel like it's precisely that mystery that gives them soul. Maybe it was also an excuse to not look a bit harder.
Fucked if I know.

All on its own, though, I have been finding it easier to talk about my work, maybe it's from listening to so many other people talk about their work and being assigned readings about art.

So this oral fixation issue.
I think my favorite part of the face are the eyes, but when I draw faces, I find myself giving a lot of attention to the lips, as well. I like the lips looking like meat, which is what they are. Tissue that appears to be swollen and engorged with blood, fluffy, somehow rigid and soft at the same time, like a beach ball. Tissue that is not very resistant against sharp edges, but just tough enough to hold all the other tissue inside and so thin still that you can see through to all the red and muscle that is under it.
When I draw faces, I try as much as I can to leave the face for last, the eyes and the lips, but by the time that I've managed to work on most of the background, the eyes and lips are almost done, because I can't seem to help myself.
The line where the upper and lower lips meet, with upturned corners, it branches out into little cracks that are on the lips themselves, little wrinkles of expression, where the tissue folds. The lips slightly separated, they make a shy diversely shaped horizontal opening, right smack in the middle of them, suddenly, there is an orifice and a point of entry.
The lips so expressive and expressionless, depending on what you're looking at, and also completely puzzling. The parts of the lips, the two separate pillows in the bottom, separated by a generally decisive groove in the center. A discreet point in varying sizes at the top that then spreads out, like wings.

Through our lips, we ingest, we nurture our body, we taste our surroundings, communicate, we take in and we put out things from the world into our vessel and viceversa.

I'm almost sure I posted something relating to oral fixation earlier in the year or when I started school, but I can't seem to find the post. I haven't been diagnosed with Oral Fixation, nor do I entirely grasp what it is, even though I've looked it up more than once and read a little from different sources. The definition seems vague, at best.
This is the definition, according to dictionary.com: "noun a desire to have or put something in one's mouth, as in infants; a condition requiring stimulation of the mouth."
Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: Oral Stage

Now, the definition might be murky, because it was Freud trying to make sense of things from zero. He also thought that all our problems were rooted in masturbation and lived in an incredibly sexist era, which probably doesn't help very much, but as an idea to play with, I guess it's alright. Somewhere to start.
The human psyche is so complex, that I don't think one explanation would fit every case, either way.

My personal conclusion that I might have an oral fixation is simply because a lot of my anxieties and frustrations are manifested through my mouth: There's emotional and anxious eating, I play a lot with my mouth, I used to bite the insides of my mouth a lot, before that I bit my lower lip a ton. Now that I got a labret, I bite on that a lot, I used to play with my lower lip with my hands, just fiddling with it and now that I have the labret, I do that still.
I've resorted to chewing gum, instead of biting the insides of my mouth and whenever I feel "hungry", although I know I'm not and apparently I can chew gum endlessly. I do prefer that, than tearing at my insides with my teeth.
I also love chewing on crunchy shit, the deafening noise and having to press with my jaw, grounding down with my molars is an awesome thing.

So, I think an exploration of sorts of the probable fixation is that I've been wanting to draw mouths only and this one was finished recently. It's titled "Oral Self Portrait", and it is my mouth, with a crevice that allows my teeth to be seen and a labret piercing with horseshoe jewelry. I drew with a 3B pencil over Strathmore illustration board, I used an artist trading card, so it's 2.5 x 3.5" and with her owner, by now, I hope.

Pony Girl

"Pony Girl", is a term associated with the BDSM community, it's one of the role play things that they do, here is a link to the wikipedia article regarding animal roleplay, if you want to inform yourself: Animal Roleplay.

I started working again on Pony Girl sometime this week, after much putting things off and working on other things that I wanted to work on, but not on things that are a bit more pressing at this point in the summer.

Pony Girl started long before I started at the NYAA, I started working on her again during the first semester, had to do other stuff and I'm back with her again. She's changed in appearance, in the way that she feels and the way that she looks at me when I work on her. When I had to work on other things, she'd developed a slight frown. She has a demanding stare that pierces through me, her entire face pushing through the harness that I designed for her.

I decided sometime in the past months to cope with some strange sexual experiences that I had through some drawings. Or to kind of cleanse myself (or just use them, who cares?) and although Pony Girl didn't start out with that purpose, she is going to be one of the mediums.

I've been drawing with a 3B Faber Castell pencil over Strathmore 100lbs paper. I was set back really far with redesigning the harness, which was really difficult, because I'm no clothes or garment and accessory designer. I'm cool with how it looks and that's how it's going to look and I'm alright with it being kind of abstract and impossible for a harness, with straps that come from and go nowhere, I'm ok with that. Right now I'm just concentrating on making all the leather look the same, because, in my mind, the harness is all made of leather, ochre reddish brownish colored leather and the adornments are silver and red, I think. So getting all the leather even, I think will help me a lot in finishing it.
So, here she is.

Also, I've launched a website and here is the address: www.gabrielahandal.com And I also have an etsy shop: Gabriela Handal Arte

Thanks a lot for reading and see you next time.

Robin F. Williams

Today, I went to Robin F. Williams' opening at P.P.O.W., "Sons of the Pioneers" and, while I didn't care in particular for the work, there was one piece that I seriously liked and I liked what I read in the press release a lot.
I've been very aware, for a while now, of feminism, the patriarchy and equality and I like it when certain tables get turned in a really clever way.
So here are some excerpts from the press release which are relevant to what I'm talking about:
- "Williams challenges the roles of American masculinity and traditional portraiture by replacing the idyllic female or odalisque, with romanticized scenes of men in various states of idleness."
- "Williams drapes each figure with mixed identities that mask traditional signifiers of purpose and patriarchy in order to construct a new and sympathetic masculine mythology".
- "She adorns each male with ornamental hats and accessories, allowing them to reflect sensibilities not typically associated with the male portrait."

And this was my favorite piece, titled "Hunter".

So, yeah, I went to an opening haha! Do remember my Facebook page, which you should like and share with your friends: Gabriela Handal Arte
And also, my website (yeah, MY website. It's weird, I know) is slowly filling with my work, do not hesitate to have a look: www.gabrielahandal.com
Thank you so much for reading!