Just following my obsession for “Deer culture” and related stuff.
It is funny, people here wonder why I am doing this as in Sao Paulo deer is a word used to relate gay people. hahah, why, Caio, why are you so obsessed with gays? hahaha.
And writing Doe I realized that it means “to give” in Brazilian Portuguese too. So for the locals this painting must to be a huge gay thing, a gay screaming “”To Give !!!”", well, here To Give means anal sex too. hahahah.!!!!
Ohh.. It would be hard to explain if I gave a minimum shit to this. I use to say my life would be much easier to explain if I was gay: 37 years old, single, no children, artist, went to college to study psychology ( here this is a science basically studied by women ), well dressed, slim, I hate all sports, I hate cars, I don’t talk about business……. and other things I can’t remember now but all the time I remember I see how much people think it isn’t for men to like or do. hahahah.
I am Christian, and different of what people think, the Fundamentalist Christians are the only ones who don’t pick on my lifestyle and don’t judge me, the only people I can be among with and won’t make stupid questions about my personal taste or every single aspect of life. Believe or not.
Ok, back to my real concern: Deer.
I can’t take from my mind an idea of the deer being hit by a car.
So the animal is leaving its own sheltered environment, it is naive and reaches the asphalt of the road. Comes the light of the car… a noisy smelling fast car… all the reasons to scare the deer to death and make it run away… but not. The deer, all naive has no idea of what is happening and gets hypnotized by the car, attracted by it. It is seducing to the animal for some reason…. and he gets hit , dies.
Now trade the word “deer” and substitute by “people”. Take the word “car” and substitute by “world”.
This is the story of our lives. The seducing world hitting us and killing us before we realize what is really happening.
Ok, It is a cheap metaphor. But it got so real and intense to me. And the fact I think these animals are so beautiful and elegant… and the life I had and what happened to me, all the lies I believed and made my life miserable in many different ways. It all was very impressive.
Because of this idea last week I took a decision that was very surprising to me. I didn’t expect to be able to do it. I got rid of lies in material form. Lies that I believed since I was a small children. Lies that took more than 20 year to collect and had to do huge and uncountable sacrifices to reunite and preserve. Wow, It was radical to me… but was so good, I felt so light and free after to get rid of it.
How many illusions and lies we collect for the whole life believing that are doing the right thing but in the end it only brought fake pleasures and real disturbs and destruction ? It is so hard to look to ourselves and realize most part of our decisions were formed by wrong concepts we have about ourselves and the world around. We usually believe we are so right doing this. The world teaches we are right doing this.ah.. forget… I am a bit ashamed, I shouldn’t have talked about this now, not this way.
It is unbearably hot here. Not kidding, I have to take shower and change clothes at least 3 or 4 times a day.
I have painted this since yesterday… well, yesterday I painted for one or two hours, I don’t remember right now… today I painted for five hours.
The biggest challenge to me on this work was to do not allow it become too illustrative, I didn’t want a painting that passed an idea of anything specific. It has to be the painting by itself just letting the expression comes up.
It is hard when you do figurative painting, based on observation. How to do not fall into illustration, or cheap dumb realism, or tack surrealism, or a stylized mannerism? Or even the stereotyped solutions we see everyday on internet and art fairs?
I wanted to work the same face by the same angle using different scales. The biggest risk wasn’t to make it happen but was to fall into a “cool idea”, an illustrative crap that any teenager or socialite would enjoy.
I made all the mistakes I haven’t done for ages. I am annoyed, angry, this heat wave melted my humor, all around me was sticky , paint getting dry too fast, I think I am smelling, stinking…. oh… all the reasons to stop and don’t go forward .
But, as I say. The world and its conditions will always be weaker than me. I did it anyway. I am not going to allow weather tells me what or how to do. If I didn’t stop to paint when I was extremely poor and didn’t have money for food or even water, if I didn’t stop to paint when nobody believed or liked my work, if I didn’t stop for any reason…. it isn’t a creep weather that will make me give up.
wow, I am still sweating a fountain here. Must to take a shower now and prepare to go to my job.
