Trait.Des

I declare this piece to be the most profound piece I’ve made to this day. It appears to impress at first, with brilliant colors and expressive strokes, but the underlying message gives light to the darkness of addiction and its role in the destruction of my family unit at a young age. I drew the subject as he watched a long movie, then overlayed it with oil paint to express the emotions I amounted over the course of my life with this subject. Personally, it is my father, so it is a powerful piece that aids in resolving ‘unresolvable’ feelings. I reveal the true feelings that are undeniably there but muted deep within: the red hues express warmth, suppression, and numbness; the blue hues express the raw sense of despair, coldness, and utter regret. Notice how the glass he holds is white, a symbol of all colors combined – meaning the root of all the colors and what they represent in the painting. The atmosphere is comforting, the chair, the background, all but where he lays his head. The body ceases to identify with comfort, as it is just a temporary fix and nothing but an impermanent setting. The body can be numbed and comforted to its extent, but wherever his head lays, so do the tainted thoughts and reality that addiction bares on the individual.

Hundreds of layers of oil painted signatures, symbols, and semiotic tones. The word “Serpentine” refers top the archetype of a serpent: snake-like in shape or movement, a winding course of action. A blue snake is hidden behind the layers and is contextualized as the master of the image – with all of the semiotic notes representing the way of the serpent. The archetype of the serpent can represent both positive and negative aspects of human experience, including temptation, sin, wisdom, healing, transformation, protection, and power – I hone in on the notion of temptation, sin, and power. I intend to illustrate how the serpent like behavior in humans appears as a mirage of painted and tainted imagery that builds up to cover the raw state of the individual (that being the blue snake behind the marks). An elaborate mask per say. It is a beautiful impression at a glance, but that is what it intends the observant to think, as if the human knows the difference between meaning and masks nowadays. The snake head, in the shape of a heart is from my ‘Heart-Bite’ piece, in which I carry the sly ways of the serpent in the act of deception and mockery at the hands of temptation and the idea of ‘sin’.

Inspired by Keith Haring’s bubble figures, I wanted to express the plethora of our current era, a political statement that reveals the overcomplexities, crowded judgement, and endless paths of inaccuracy that one can take. An expression of movement, chaos, and how feeble the human endeavor is once its fate is placed in the hands of our society. At the time, I was very pessimistic about the culture I lived in and how things should be a certain way, and my utterance to despise and criticize those that thought radically different from my ridged judgment. I have evolved from then, but when I look back on the painting, I see a cluttered mind, too distracted by a chaotic environment. Now I see through the clutter, but this is a representation of the post-modern man in disarray – strayed away from traditional values, family orientated themes, and enticed towards fables and temptation. An insight to the hidden message here is between the two figures, draws a face, a disturbed presence with its eyes placed on the belly-buttons of the figures, to represent their ‘life holes’ (as in the womb). Once again, I reveal an experience through signatures and semiotic notes through spontaneous, yet precise strokes.

At the time this piece was made, I was experiencing powerful emotions causing stress and a great disturbance – a result of betrayal. The preparation was instant, a few random confident strokes with charcoal set a spontaneous adventure into whatever I could make of it. This process of sporadic movement and spatial abstraction got me in tune with my emotions as I began to formulate context. After absorbing a lot of content from Picasso and his deformed, geometric figures and fingers, I believe it is the main influence of the piece – as seen in the morbid curling hands and gruesome disfigurements. The premise of the image is saccadic eye movement: the intent to draw and lead the viewer’s eyes through the use of emphasis, lines, and strategic focal points (of which I inserted magnets behind each focal point and poured staples on top of them, as seen sticking to medium). Each stroke leads to another and when followed, takes the eye across the image with great balance. Note that the image can be flipped upside down, revealing a face with a demonic presence. Overall, the performance of this piece is intended to induce fear, anxiety, stress, and disturbance. Unpleasant as it seems but true in its execution and blunt in its representation of the rawness of reality.

A preliminary execution, but simple enough to depict a story. This was done soon after I experienced a ‘bite to the heart’: the yellow ribs are electric and represent the energy in a body full of youth and potential; the snake is the stinging feeling of heartbreak; the heart deflated and weathered; the three marks on the heart symbolize a ‘permanent’ (as it seemed) mark left by the infectious bite. The placement of the message is given context by its frame, coat hanger, and jacket wrapped around it – delivered as a shell of one’s torso. The composition revolves around the heart, that being positioned in the upper left portion of the piece.

I find beauty in architecture.

In the way light reflected and reveals ridges, curves, and bevels. My Macedonian roots drew me into this church, as its history and weathered state morphs into the landscape, all but the peak, in which protrudes perfectly through the focal point of the image.

This image is composed of 5 faces: love (female figure), fear (upside down, scream-like figure), wisdom (belly of female, with elongated beard), chaos (the warrior, middle-right), and order (outlines all subjects from top to bottom). The idea was to represent the 5 most profound human entities. Each one necessary for one another to function in a balanced ecosystem. The wood burning can be viewed from all angles (90, 180, 270-degree rotations), revealing a new impression each rotation. The impression mimics harmony in mother nature as the line work morphs in and out of the natural grain, and around archetypes of the moon, man, and mother nature.