WOODCOCK - - Page 7

God: All The Credit and None of the Blame

WOODCOCK on May 1, 2013

Why are there no hymns of blame? Why do we hear people thanking God for the happy accidents and praying for his help during avoidable disasters?

I’m not faulting anyone’s need for meaning. I’m not begrudging anyone for wanting there to be a plan behind the workings of the cold random uncaring universe, but just imagine, to be able to drop a devil wherever there is death and an angel wherever there is life. It’s a good gig if you can get it.

I’m not interested in questioning God’s will, his power or his existence (today). I’m questioning the foolish motivations behind the concept of God — the egotistic belief that we deserve a gift giving invisible sky daddy and the shithead externalization of all blame towards the many anthropomorphic boogeymen from which He protects us. Oh the sweet, soothing self delusion of fairytale placebos.

No, I’m not faulting the tendency to want there to be a face behind all the scary things that we don’t understand. I just have to shake my head at any adult who would settle for the ignorant imaginings of a scared pagan explaining away the thunder. Give yourself credit when you can. Accept the blame when you must…but the rest of the time you can just accept that the universe doesn’t give a fuck about you.

Photoshop comp of “All the Credit, None of the Blame”

So here we see God sheepishly holding up a new house and a happy angel doll as all glory is praised around Him while below, an abandoned devil doll accompanies death and destruction that surely He had nothing to do with. This piece falls in line with my other work where I expose symbols and sacred imagery to the ridicule they deserve when presented in a literal way. I will paint it on my used fence pickets in a graphic style. More advertisement than Holy Icon.

Keep digging, WOODCOCK 🪏

Cigars and Sexual Awakening: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Cigars and Sexual Awakening: Shrewd Puberty Metaphor

WOODCOCK on February 21, 2013

2013 • 28″ x 38″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

Wikipedia told me:

Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity. In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the blood of menstruation,[27] braving the “dark forest” of womanhood…the wolf threatens the girl’s virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator.

Now all of this talk is rather Freudian, but we all know Freud said that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”…probably because he liked to smoke them. Now if the wolf is dragging the girl into womanhood and the woodsman is reaping the benefits, then they both have an interest in her “taking up smoking.”

A few people have recognized the composition of this piece as being a cigar box. Leaving the wood behind the figures unpainted highlights the sign-like quality.

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Acrimony and Cheese: Delivering Powerful “Fuck You” To Expectations

WOODCOCK on February 20, 2013

2013 • 45″ x 31.5″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

As humans, we mask our existential angst and despair with any number of diversions and pleasurable sensory experiences…foremost among these is melted processed cheese product. This housewife’s acrimony can’t be masked as she readies to light another cigarette (a great way to hasten the death we all fear) after extinguishing the last in the party food, boldly giving a literal and figurative “Fuck You!” to whomever doesn’t like it.

The used fence pickets lend a feeling of age with the warped, knot filled support becoming part of the content of the piece, helping to evoke the bygone era represented in the woman’s clothing and the mid century chrome formica dining kitchen table. Despite the presence of the delicious cheese, she isn’t about to maintain the demure facade of the good housewife any longer.

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Existential Dinner Party Revisited: Distress, Diversions and Comfort Food

WOODCOCK on December 21, 2012

Self Doubt and Sauerkraut painting by Moe Profane — “Self Doubt and Sauerkraut” – 2012 version

My “elevator speech.” for this series has been lacking, I recently realized. People see the food, they see the ubiquitous devil and angel, the distressed individual, and they ask, “What does it mean?” I’m not interested in applying secret meanings postmortem, but I have thought more about how this idea was hatched and what it was about it that I found compelling.

I, as the artist, try to avoid decoding exactly the associations my brain pieces together. I don’t want to hinder creativity, inhibit visual expression, and decrease my production by having to craft everything I do into a finely honed allegory. I want unconscious associations to live, grow and evolve into surprisingly complex and rich juxtapositions that “synergize” into deeper truths. In other words I don’t sweat it. If it amuses me, I paint it.

So of course, it really isn’t important for me for the viewer to be able to cast his eyes on my piece and immediately decider its “message”. I try to provide a sideways glance at reality, to unveil the secret power of symbolic meaning and to help myself and others to stop and think about why we do what we do and why we feel the way we feel. I’m not telling stories, and I’m not trying to just make pretty pictures.

People need hints from time to time and when their interest is piqued, they ask questions. I welcome that, but I don’t always have a good answer ready. The risk is always in making the mystical complexities of a slowly developed, living, breathing painting into a simple verbal decoding. People will assume there is nothing more to discover and move on.

I have long stood back and marveled at we humans’ need to find a cultural excuse to party en masse on almost a monthly basis. We are living from diversion to diversion, ignoring the painful, scary randomness of reality. These painting are simply an illustration of how we numb ourselves to existential angst with arbitrary celebrations, comfort foods, drugs and drinks.

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Paisley Muertos Chair: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Paisley Muertos Chair: Pop A Squat On Beautiful Art

WOODCOCK on November 28, 2012

2012 • 32″ x 15″ x 15″
acrylic, spray paint, fabric on wood

I was asked to submit work to a functional art show in Houston in November, 2012. I had never done any such thing. I’m not big on “surface decorating” so it was a big creative exercise for me to make my type of art work on a random “functional object.”

A trip to one of many local Goodwill stores had me dragging home any wooden thing with a flat surface that would take paint. I found this basic wooden chair and figured the seat would be a great place to try out the latest in my “Paisley Muertos” series…since I’ve sold out of all the older ones.

I had to take the back off which was a challenge to do without breaking anything. Then I sanded and glued down the fabric to the seat very carefully. Worked out great. I painted the seat and the back separately and put it all back together at the end. Worked out pretty well. I’m going to hit Goodwill again and find more stuff to paint on. I think stuff like this will be a great addition to a show of my paintings.

Room for improvement lies in the fact that I did not address the type of chair I was using when deciding on imagery. I’ll need to keep that in mind in the future. I suppose the images of decorated death on an innocent child’s desk chair is startling but isn’t really addressed directly by me here. Hmmmm….

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7 Years Bad Luck: Relativist Pop Art by Moe Profane

7 Years Bad Luck: Surprise Associations Arrive When You’re Looking

WOODCOCK on November 27, 2012

2012 • 3.5″ x 15.5″ x 3.5″
acrylic, spray paint, mirror on wood

A trip to one of many local Goodwill stores had me dragging home any wooden thing with a flat surface that would take paint. I found this $10 chunk of walnut into which 7 holes were cut to hold candles. I meditated and wikipedia’ed on the number 7 for a while, thinking of how to incorporate its significance into the piece somehow.

“7 years bad luck” occurred to me at some point. Other things were also considered for a while until the idea of incorporating a broken mirror popped into my head. BAM! I found this one at the store that was exactly the right size. Art miracles can happen.

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Displaying Art in a Bar: Making the Most of Opportunities

WOODCOCK on November 4, 2012

You have to plan, anticipate and ask questions, especially if you don’t get to see the space before arriving to set up. I had the chance to take some art to New Orleans recently. It was something I have been wanting to do for years. The issue was that it was one night only, in a bar, and I had no idea what to expect.

I started with lots of questions with the organizer. Poor young lady. Just a senior at Tulane, she was used to other young folks who were inexperienced and just happy to have a space to show their college portfolios…not a surly, 40 year-old, stressed out stranger from San Antonio who was questioning everything.

After getting the info on the barricades we would have at our disposal, I sketched this up:

And here are some pics of how it turned out:

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*photos by Carl Bordelon

New Work Concept Exploration: Ennui Au Jus

WOODCOCK on November 3, 2012

I have begun working on this new work. “Ennui Au Jus.”

We’ve all heard about combining food with other pleasurable sensory experiences like cheese and art shows, prime rib and strippers, sex and pastrami, so why not combine delicious food with a debilitating existential crisis?

Nothing in the world is quite so awful as boredom…I’m talking about finding life itself not only uninteresting but also purposeless. Existential boredom defines an inability to find not just particular things but all of life interesting. It manifests itself as a mood in which, for no reason you can articulate, nothing seems to satisfy—even things that normally do.
Alex Lickerman, M.D.

Au jus is French for “with [its own] juice”. The boredom that comes from having not purpose, no pressing need to act, no vision in our head of a future state that we mush attain, like a carrot enticing a horse to keep moving forward, can have us stewing in our warmed-over juices. We can choose to focus on happy distractions or accept that even if we find a diversion to distract us from our boredom, all we’ll have is a temporary distraction from the inevitability of a meaningless life and an insignificant death.

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A Breakfast of Eggs and Absinthe: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

A Breakfast of Eggs and Absinthe: Simple Pleasures

WOODCOCK on October 22, 2012

2012 • 42″ x 24.75″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

This was created for submission to the 2012 Huevos Rancheros jurored silent art auction. I had a while back found and noted a great(?) morning after, hair of the dog type drink: egg whites and absinthe. The idea was to use eggs in a vintage graphic sign type design on old fence pickets, incorporating themes from those wonderful Victorian absinthe lithograph posters.

Keep digging, WOODCOCK 🪏

Self Doubt and Sauerkraut: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Self Doubt and Sauerkraut: An Unusual Perspective

WOODCOCK on October 22, 2012

2012 • 52.5″ x 35″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

Self doubt and sauerkraut obviously came together because of the rhyme, but the feelings of doubt that could be induced by the sight and odor of the strange and exotic are what is highlighted in this piece. The cautious angel is repulsed, the devil is ready to try anything, and the cat in the lederhosen is caught between belief and disbelief. Uncertainty, distrust, lack of sureness petrify him.

Keep digging, WOODCOCK 🪏