This painting depicts Morgan, a local girl from Quaker Gap, NC, where I live. In doing a portrait, I try and set it up with elements that say something about the model and their life. For four generations, Morgan's family have run a meat packing store where the locals bring their cows, pigs, and deer to be cleaned, dressed, and packed. There used to be many such stores, but this is the last one remaining as most simply go to the grocery store these days.

    What I'm also experimenting with in this painting is some of the psychological and symbolic elements of the objects in the composition. Having traveled to many native cultures around the world that still practice their traditional religions based on shamanism and the numerous other belief systems, I was struck by how many of these symbols still exist in our own culture. As Joseph Campbell pointed out so well in his work, hunter gather cultures generally worship the totemic spirits of the animals they hunt (represented in my painting by the deer skull), while cultures based on agriculture tend to worship the death and resurrection of a renewing god or goddess (represented by the stalks of wheat grass that were likely one of the first agricultural products).

    I have been fascinated by many of these themes lately and have been exploring these ideas visually in my art of late, which is a departure from the more literal paintings I've done in the past. I especially love the juxtaposition of elements that one wouldn't normally put together, such as the animal skull with a young girl. One is at the beginning of life and the other at the end and yet both are beautiful in their own way.

 

    It is so hard to put a painting into words! I generally don't try, just letting the visuals tell their own story and evoke a different response from each viewer. I especially love to see the variety of responses and thoughts a single painting can evoke in different people. Each of us brings our own history to any work of art so will interpret it uniquely. At it's best, I believe art should work as a catalyst for thought and inspiration, without dictating what the response should be. I find it interesting how this single painting has been described as morbid, beautiful, disturbing, and even romantic by different people whom I've shown it to.