“Out to Lunch”, The Human Condition Series, No. 72

Insanity is an important level to reach when you unlock yourself as an artist. Its a terrible and beautiful road we traverse to get to ourselves, and there is this kind of pandora’s box breaking point you get to when tapping into the raw grueling sector of yourself that provides the viewer with the best you can be. Even at the pinnacle of your outlandish self, when you’ve reached what you think is the barrier of your safety point.. you realize that there is yet another mountain to climb in front of you.. and that life your life and the potential of your aesthetic is a endless mountain range filled with even steeper peaks of your craziness and depth.

With insanity, comes the rawness, the depth, the introspective looking glass to yourself and what you are trying to convey in your work.

In the beginning of this TENxTENxTEN project, I relied on the warmth and simplicity of my geometric work to carry me on throughout my life. It was the piece “Wake Up and Smell the Sound of Coffee” that broke the mental camel’s back, and carried me up the first flight of the craziness and roughness of my work.

I have, for most of my life, painted simple things for safety. I had kept my work far from the integral deep part of my heart, because I was terrified of connecting my viewers to any portion of myself and my life’s story. I figured, that people just wanted to see the aesthetic, and that any connection to my head would be in fact detrimental to my artwork.

It was where I exposed myself to the coarse elements that brought people to the real portion of my work. It was that sense of approval from the vast change of my work that brought me to where I am.

In doing so I began to paint everywhere I went. From the various studios in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.. to the streets of Paris, Berlin, New York City, Philadelphia, Denver, DC, and beyond. Each moment, each painting, I got closer to connecting my work to myself, and in doing so I opened up all the rifts like a blustering electrical storm inside myself.

In this painting, entitled “Out To Lunch”, I combine ALL NINE “Human Condition” Series pieces into a cluster of different emotions and mental actions. In here I have put the elements of previous pieces about love (Forevermore), anxiety(#), joy (Sold in Face, Bubbles in Space), despair (Rain City Blues), confusion (Topsy Turvy), ambition (Sleeping Fluorescent Giants), bliss (Cotton Candy Universe), frustration (Metropolis Rising), and hope (Infinite Summer), and mashed them together into a portrait of the ultimate human condition.

This is the 10th in “The Human Condition” Series, and 82nd in the collection. This piece is the largest of the collection, measuring 36″ x 36″