Heartbreak Hotel

Everyone pays a visit to the Heartbreak Hotel at some point, so I thought the place was worth a painting. The Heartbreak Hotel is one of many stops on life’s highway, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a final destination.

I used the five stages of grief first posited by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, as a stepping-off point for painting the characters in this piece, and then added a few ‘stages’ of my own. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which stage is embodied by which figure. In the 40-plus years since her book was published, Kubler-Ross’ theory of a continuum of grief along which people progress in a relatively linear fashion has been pretty soundly debunked, however, the stages themselves are still relevant as forms of human suffering and the various ways we come to terms with, fight against, or succumb to a great loss in our lives.

This piece is similar stylistically and thematically to other paintings in my autobiographical series. Stylistically I continue to use bright colors and cartoon-like figures and to break the frame up into smaller sections in a non-linear narrative. Thematically I create a visual depiction of a psychological state, or states, of mind.

By the way, I’m thrilled to announce that the Untitled painting in my last post, also part of this series, won third place in the painting category at the City of Normandy Park’s Annual Arts Festival the first weekend in June.

 

Autobiographical Art

 

Untitled, 12″x16″ acrylic on canvas

I have a friend who told me he creates art as a way of ‘signposting’ his life. I think that’s a wonderful way to describe the the kind of expressionistic work I often do, so I’m borrowing his word! Signposting through art is a way of processing and making sense of important events or themes in my life. The inspiration for a creative work often lies in the emotions generated by a particular set of events rather than an aesthetic concern, although the two become immediately entangled once I engage with my canvas.  This piece, while entirely a work of fiction (!), is nonetheless inspired by personal experience. It’s a visual snapshot of a moment in psychological time. The division into sections is supposed to indicate the fractured nature of memory, rarely moving chronologically, fixing on one event only to forget another, yet somehow creating a patchwork, a pastiche, that captures much more than the sum of its disparate parts.