Secrets

For one of our assignements in ARTS 400B i was suppose to make a piece that represented a secret. I decided to depict an event from when i lived in Riverside, CA back in 1990. A homeless man came into my house and kept me locked in my room over night. I think i have finally gotten over my fear of the dark.

I started with a self portrait i had done earlier in the semester (that i wasn't real crazy about in the first place - another attempt with a new media - prismacolor markers) as a value study. I had done it on stips of paper woven together in a basket weave with the express purpose of taking it back apart; a deconstruction to create a fragmentation portrait. Then i added scrap strips of browns, greys and blacks to stand for my "house of sticks". The entire thing is now seen as an explosion, swirling in the air (blue and white background). Lastly, i added some red acrylic paint as bloody smears of hand and finger prints to represent the physical violence of the attack.