The plan last week was that I, along with three other artists, were going to do a live painting demonstration as a part of the Cinequest Film Festival and then the resulting paintings were going to be voted on by the festival goers. At the end of the fest, the paintings and the artists would be presented as a part of the closing ceremony.
Taking advantage of the VIP Lounge
Of course, the film festival was canceled after only a few days because of the corona virus. So no contest, no voting, no end of fest presentation. In the intervening time, I managed to paint the largest work I’ve done yet 6ft x 4ft. And I did it acrylics, which is a medium I haven’t really used much before. I think I going to stick with oils for the time being.
The festival theme was “elation” and we were asked to come up with a work based on that theme. This isn’t a topic I would naturally gravitate towards – “alienation” probably is closer to my speed. But while searching the internet for ideas, I came across a still from the David Cronenberg movie Scanners . That movie is most famous for having a guy’s head explode in a shower of blood and gore. I decided to paint that guy’s face just before he explodes. It looks a bit like elation but it also looks like a rictus of pain. Or as one patron of the arts noted, “It looks like he’s nutting.”
I worked at Kaleid Gallery where I will have a solo show in August. That is unless we’ve devolved into a dystopian hellscape by then.