Here’s a new one called “My Last Black Mass With Ole St. Murphy.” It is pretty dark visually, but has left me with a positive impression.
Remember the saying, “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong?” It was Murphy’s Law. My dad used to say that all the time, he even had a poster! Well, you know what? This became his reality. Now, I love my old man, but how fucking sad! It took me a lot of years to realize that by adopting these attitudes I was creating negativity in my life, and many more years to unlearn them. My internal dialog can still be a real bastard, but I am learning to beat him back. My friend Alexis turned me on to mocking your negative voices and they go away. So now whenever I start getting real negative about something I say to myself in my most pathetic whiny voice,” Oooooh poor me. I just can’t do this right. I’m a total failure. It’s soooooooo saaaaaaad.” It’s kind of funny now, the ego hates to be mocked, and I can usually get past the fear and loathing quickly.
Anyway, that’s this painting. You can have a bright, vivid existence, or you can hold on to the disgusting mask of pessimism. I think of pessimism as a curse that you place on yourself by always reinforcing the worst possible outcome of any situation. Pondering curses led to the black mass reference in the title, which led to the tongue in cheek decision to call him “Saint Murphy” as he is clearly the opposite of such. At some point before I was even aware of what this painting was about I was compelled to add the wedding ring. I wasn’t sure how it related to the painting, or if it was necessary to tell the story, but I put it on there. Of course I am really excited to be getting married next year, I just wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with this painting, and I don’t just add things to fill up a painting. As I continued working the symbolism of the individual elements materialized and I realized that the wedding ring had everything to do with this painting. I needed do free myself from my pessimistic thought patterns before I was able to commit to marriage, because at the core of getting married is optimism or there really is no point, is there?
My Last Black Mass With Ole St. Murphy
Acrylic & Varnish on Bristol
2013
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