AGAIN, ALLIGATORS: Alligator

The final piece in this series. It turned out slightly more fantastic than I had initially anticipated, but I think it works well within the context of the series of illustrations. My wife really liked this one, so she claimed it right away.

ALLIGATOR

15 inches by 11 inches
acrylic paint, charcoal, ink, marker, mucus, pencil and rain on watercolor paper
October 31, 2012

AGAIN, ALLIGATORS: United States

There's a lot of venom in this piece. I don't like to address political matters much in my art, or online, but I live in what is often referred to as a "battleground state." What that means is that throughout the month of October, which was a challenging month for me anyway, we were absolutely assaulted by a neverending barrage of radio and television ads, mailers, door to door campaigners, billboards, op eds, and so on. I despise politicians under the best of circumstances, and the events of that month filled me with so much impotent fury that I was choking on it. Elections, especially national elections, are rarely more than choosing between which candidate is the least deceptive, disingenuous, repulsively self-interested, power hungry, and willing to commit any offense to gain influence and wealth. They sicken me, the lot of them, and Hell is too good a place for them.

See what I mean? I don't like what thinking about politicians does to me. But a lot of that came out in this piece, the third of four visual reactions to The Alligators of Abraham. Somehow though, all that venom and hatred and fury produced a solid piece of art. So for that, I am appreciative.

UNITED STATES

15 inches by 11 inches
acrylic paint, ash, blood, charcoal, ink, marker and pencil on paper
October 28, 2012

AGAIN, ALLIGATORS: The Woman

THE WOMAN

15 inches by 11 inches
acrylic paint, ink, marker and pencil on watercolor paper
October 27, 2012

AGAIN, ALLIGATORS: The Millionaires

In October, I was invited by author Robert Kloss and the web site Sundog Lit to create some kind of work reacting to Robert's amazing new novel The Alligators of Abraham, which I had also created the cover and three interior illustrations for, in any way I saw fit. This kind of artistic freedom is very rare, so the opportunity excited me. Robert asked me to focus specifically on the final section of the book and rather than simply visually depict portions of the narrative, I took a different approach. I read and re-read that section several times and took the ideas and impressions I drew from those readings and gave them visual form. Not quite a re-mix or even an interpretation, more a reaction or a visual conversation with the text and the author. I'm very proud of these and think that the four pieces I created were a new plateau for me. Since they've been posted on the Sundog Lit site for almost two weeks now, I thought I would post them here as well. Here is the first of those four, and if you like these, you should really track down The Alligators of Abraham. It is phenomenal.

THE MILLIONAIRES

15 inches by 11 inches
acrylic paint, blood, ink, marker and pencil on watercolor paper
October 20, 2012