Blog Redact 1. 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
The first few weeks at the RCA were simultaneously very scary and utterly thrilling. Surrounded by so many new people. Negotiating space and time in an institution when the only institutions I have ever been in long term are hospitals.
The first term was full of exciting promise. I started as I meant to continue. At a pace. I needed to set aside my expectations and start by making sense of the past few years. Firstly, I wanted to address this blog as it has played such an integral part of my creative life.
So, I took important texts from the blog and blew them up to one and half meters by one meter and began either erasing or redacting or enhancing these huge new works on paper.
This research was never really meant for anyone than me but certainly helped make sense of this late term transition from film and words and structure to unstructured mark making. As I mentioned in an earlier blog I spent the previous year working with two young producers on two original screenplays.
One of the scripts I was particularly proud. Both screenplays were a tribute to the highly structured work I had been making these past decades.
Useless Man. Self Portrait 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
Then, through this work, I started looking at my life in AA these past 27 years I had devoted to sobriety. I felt angry with AA. Had it been a monumental waste of time? Am I an alcoholic? I had predicated so many of my most important decisions on my relationship with a cult? I had moved to LA. I had chosen my agent and manager and lawyer… because of AA. Ultimately I felt as if all I had really achieved was a race toward insanity buoyed by other insane alcoholics. Who could be the maddest manman in Madland ? I was a clear winner by far. As soon as I stepped away from the AA competitive madness I was free and consequently so much happier.
I still find myself drawn to crazy addicts and alcoholics. It’s the intensity of the connection, feeding my desire for more… me and my addict.
I set about erasing the 12 steps.
12 Steps Erased (Triptych) 1 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
12 Steps Erased (Triptych) 2 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
12 Steps Erased (Triptych) 3 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
I made a series of works addressing the horrors of the Gaza Genocide inspired by Picasso’s Guernica. Drawn over a blog description of my own decent into hell. The micro and the macro.
Gaza Erased 1. 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
Gaza Erased 2 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
Gaza Erased 3 24/25 RCA 1m x 1.5m
