Vague Pompadour

I like to look at this acrylic on canvas painting as a sort of "relaxed" comic book panel. Starting from a series of loose gestural shapes, I saw a red-eyed character staring right back at me, with a wavy jet black pompadour, greased all rockabilly-like.  Some wordless word balloons hover in front of this character's face, to the right of the picture. Colored with bright and simple colors that I usually associate with kids pop culture, such as comics, candy wrappers, movie popcorn boxes... it also reminds me of a rolling landscape. How about this: a red-eyed dog-faced character runs out of a comic book and across a rolling landscape saying...nothing.  Works for me! 

Seriously though, it's really not important to me that I have a "message"; that really must come from the viewer. As an artist, I concern myself with making an interesting picture. Your associations are the ones that really matter. But since we all live in the same time in history, and experience the same mass media, and are familiar with what the world is like now (and then) there are cetain that things and references that you and I will pick up on together, and those things will come out in how you see my artwork. Although my way of seeing the world may be a little different from yours, the graphic symbols, shapes, forms, and artistic approach may strike a chord within you. When I look at this piece, I think of old campy movies, probably when I used to go to the New Loft Theater as a kid, when it was on 6th Street, on the UA campus. But if you don't see that, that fine, because art is like people: you develop your own relationship with it in a way that best suits your personality and temperment. (Acrylic on canvas, roughly 24" x 18" in size, made in 2006; I also made the frame out of stained plywood)