Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Victor Pross — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:22:07 GMT

Nice work. Both you and I see people in a different light. ;]

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Cat Moody — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:25:55 GMT

:D fantastic work, the fathers eyes are creeeepy.

I do paint, here be the last work I have done! http://fc07.deviantart.com/fs5/i/2005/132/1/1/Pierrot_by_CMoody.jpg

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Victor Pross — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:58:03 GMT

Sure, here it is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/white_hope/3096822932/

Do you paint?

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Cat Moody — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:51:18 GMT

Oh wow, I feel quite excited

Is there anywhere I could see a picture?

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Victor Pross — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:39:43 GMT

I have painted this. :}

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Cat Moody — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:05:33 GMT

Wow. Brilliant idea. Would you consider painting that?

SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Victor Pross — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:47:55 GMT

Here is an excerpt from my forthcoming novel, The Hungry Artist. It speaks of gaining a perverse inspiration to capture a spiritually infected family in a painting.

Now, here is the thing--I wrote this long before I knew of Stefan’s views of “the family” and looking at it now—I am amazed at how parallel and in sync our views are on this subject. However, I made once edit, looking at my old material. I use the phrase "scare-tissue"--if I may!

The excerpt speaks for itself.

“Possessed with the spirit of creativity, I worked with an intense concentration and unlimited energy. I completely isolated myself in a state of agonized ecstasy. I began painting one canvas after another, working around the clock in my little shit-hole bachelor apartment. The heat was heavy, leaving one feeling as if the air could be swallowed instead of breathed. My shirt clung to my frame by wet splotches. Yet I felt clear-headed as I moved paint across the canvas, as if I could continue indefinitely without exhaustion.

Finally, a few hours later, it was done: the painting I particularly felt proud of. I painted a truthful picture of a garden-variety family, a portrait that spun Norman Rockwell on his head.

The painting was a study of the macabre pathology of a generic family: father, mother, son and daughter stand frozen as if posing for a photographer in a studio. The parents are all smiles, but their dysfunction and psychological scars are clearly visible as they are manifested physically. The children look insolent and sullen and they, too, are grotesque caricatures of their emotional damage. At first glance, one would tend to conclude that some hideous accident had befallen the family, their faces discoloured and deformed. But if one examines the portrait closely, it becomes clear that the only deformity present is not really physical but rather: psychological and philosophical.

I entitled the painting ‘scar-tissue’. Disciples of Sigmund Freud, I imagine, would have a field day trying to catalogue its symbols and meaning:

Like the scars in the flesh, like a genetic code, the fusion of prejudice, neurosis and psychosis is transmitted from one generation to another. The parents give it to the children and in turn the children give it to their children, so that eventually the whole genealogy is patterned with infected souls, like iron particles in a magnetic field!

The abstract mental states were communicated visually: the mother is wearing a crucifix. The father is a yellow block-head. The son is wearing an Earth First t-shirt and the daughter adorns various Nazi symbols.

“What family did you have in mind when you painted this?” it was once asked of me.
“You miss the point here,” I answered. “No one particular family posed for this painting. These caricatures are an archetype of a very real social phenomenon, an image of a splinter of a wide social illness.”

Parenting

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

Re: SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".

SCAR-TISSUE in "The Hungry Artist".