Left Behind

My miserable friend,
companionably muted.

They constructed our cage
from reflections of their own
despair and disappointment.

I dreamed your dreams.
We shared their darkness.

Together we huddled.
We never told

until the door opened.
I flew fast on stolen wings.
The window closed
with you left behind.

I escaped our cage,
the one they built,
only to craft one of my own.

I made my bars with hate and self loathing.
I can't break them.

I hope you are far away,
flying free,
leaving me behind.

New Orleans Silence

I might have been something:

a physicist, a shaman, a healer, 

a streetwalker.

Instead, I am broken,

created in your image.

A broken doll made by a twisted man,

criticism beating in your empty chest.

Your bile corkscrewed into my marrow,

from the moment I began my desperate crawl

away from you.

I could never get far enough.

Your craftsmanship was faulty.

I am left a nothing, a heap of broken parts,

never working, never feeling,

abandoned by my maker.

                                                                                        - Loveday Funck




                                                             

Fish Hunt

My original exposure to Frida Kahlo was several of her self portraits.  While I admired her skill in capturing her own likeness, I wasn't blown away.  I had heard her described as a feminist icon, but, based on the self portraits, I wasn't getting it.

Later, I did a little more research and came across more of her work.  

Finally, I understood.  

I think artists reflect their struggles in their work.  We use our art as a way of working through a lot of our emotional turmoil, of trying to make sense of our own pain and the madness of the world.

The more I learned about Frida Kahlo, the more I understood.

She suffered through polio as a child.  This led her to dream of  a life in medicine. Helping to fight childhood illness would help her make sense of what she suffered.

Unfortunately, in her late teens, she was involved in a truly horrific bus accident. Her life and her body were hopelessly shattered.

How to frame that so that it makes any kind of sense?

The crooked lines of God?

So that she could help lead the world to a Marxist paradise?

So that she could inspire generations of female artists?

She endured dozens of surgeries.  She had her heart broken by both Diego Rivera, her husband, and by Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the October Revolution.

She couldn't bear the children she longed for.  She couldn't go a day without physical agony.

What was it all for?

I look at the pain in my own life and it is nothing compared to what Frida Kahlo suffered.

I hope there was a purpose to it and that she made peace with it all before the end. 

There are three specific pieces of hers that I completely love.

Previously, I completed an homage to "The Two Fridas", one of my favorites.

With "The Fish Hunt", I was drawing on the brutal, twisted life of Albert Fish and couldn't help including a little homage to Frida Kahlo's "The Wounded Deer".

Of course, I think my favorite piece is "The Broken Column".

Her struggle was a difficult one.  I cannot even begin to imagine the daily pain that she suffered.  I admire her idealism in believing in Marxism as the great hope of a great future for the world.

Her life was an unending heartbreak that was reflected in her work.

When you're shattered into so many pieces, is it even possible to achieve a sense of wholeness?  For everything to ever truly come together?  

That struggle is why she became an artist.

Pain leads us to a creative place and we try to filter it, via our art, into some semblance of meaning.

Speak No Evil

We should make an effort not only to Speak No Evil 
but also to speak good whenever possible!

The Darkest Inspiration - Fishing for Billy

Inspiration can come from the darkness.

I posted on this subject recently as the new series I have been working on started with very dark source matter.

I've managed to transform it, via my usual pure lunacy, into something that bears very little resemblance to the original.

Fish and Grace

Inspiration can come from many places: a quote, a poem, a line from a song..

Sometimes inspiration can come from a very dark place.

This piece leaves me feeling very conflicted.  I like the vibrant colors.  It has a sort of fun, surreal, fairy tale, Wonderland-esque feel, but my original impulse in making it is the antithesis of happiness and light.

I have a weakness for Victorian true crime and have been binge watching documentaries on Youtube. Eventually, I stumbled upon the disturbing tale of Albert Fish.

He was a product of the Victorian age of poorly run and brutal orphanages, but the most infamous of his crimes were committed a few decades into the new century.

He brutalized, murdered and ate children.

He was a monster, called the "boogeyman" by one of his almost victims yet, in person, he was very unimposing.

He was the single father to five children whom, reportedly, he took good care of and did not abuse.

Did he love them?  Was he capable of love?

How could a man who could brutalize and murder also be a dedicated father?  

At his trial, he was described as the "Gray Man", a man who appeared a bit of a doddering grandfatherly figure, really, the sort of man you would barely take notice of.

Perhaps that and his choice of the most helpless and innocent of victims is what makes him so disturbingly sinister.  

So, how did I go from horrific child murderer to a toadstool wonderland?

Really, I am as perplexed as you are!