Armando

I have a massive back catalogue of dip pen drawings, so they will be coming through the works for a while.  This piece and the piece to come where made shortly after the death of a friend, Armando Montano. It was a shocking reawakening for me to see the first of my peers go, and for it to be such a shining and successful personality. He will be dearly missed. While making this piece I was dealing with harsh feelings of bitterness and iniquity. I felt that something had been taken, not from me but from the world. I wanted my say, my opportunity. I felt that after someone with a soul so beautiful had been stripped from the world, my only recourse was to deface something beautiful myself. If the world was going to be ugly, harsh, and vulgar so would I. I decided to purge these emotions in a drawing, I wanted to make a madonna but an unpleasant and uneasy one. The blood and thorned heart show the holy mother's suffering, her classic beauty has been hyper-sexualized, her face is worn and she caries the classic gothic catholic symbols that were meant to support her as a burden. Weather or not I was correct in what I did, it held value for me in the fact that it helped me to face a troublesome reality I saw within myself. 

"Mondano"

dip pen and india ink on bristol 19x24"