In the U.S., May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Demons Begone is a painting that speaks to my own struggles with Bipolar Disorder, a condition I was diagnosed with in 2010 but suffered from for long before that. This painting is a perfect allegory of my depression and my mania, layers of psychotic episodes layered one on top the other to create a confused record of the days lost to despair and euphoria. In most of my work, I am cautious to build up these layers slowly, as the more heavy the layers are applied the less control I have over the artwork. I lost control of this painting very quickly, after heavy layers of paint I dragged over the surface of the canvas with the large plexiglass tool I utilize did not present the finishing layers I thought they would. Working in this manner I plan carefully to produce chaotic and random results that I predict but do not actually know what kind of mark it will ultimately leave. In this case, it had pretty much done everything I did not want to happen. So this began I long struggle to recover, which is also simpatico with my mental illness. Here is a long exorcism of color and form. I stand in my studio saying novenas and crossing the canvas with the tool that allows me to be an instrument for my art by virtue of the pills I take and a benevolent universal power looking over my shoulder. To exorcise a demon, you need stamina but force is useless. It needs to be bound in a colorful knot that it doesn’t realize is a leash until it is too late. To control my art, my chemistry, my demons, I need this divine cord to bind and lead and tether the other end around my hands so I may draw these forth into view. I halt at the place where, laughing and crying, they are transformed into frozen ghosts, sculpted forms of entropy imprinted in the ether.
