The Pain

Neurotic ramblings or unequivocal prose,
The pain is ever-present,
The pain… like cold caresses,
No words escape your blistered lips.

Your ideas fill me with purpose,
Stab me with tenacity,
Puncture my very essence,
Help me to become desensitized.

The meaning of life? What true comedy!
The pursuit of happiness? What a miserable existence!
The truth is obvious… The fruit lies within the perceived fruitlessness,
Within the barren wind-swept wastelands.

Oh what a wretched bunch we men are,
Embrace that which you fear! And only then can you truly escape the pain…

Warhol - Current Influences

Andy Warhol was an American artist whose name was synonymous with "Pop Art". He initially painted simple mass-produced items like Coke bottles and Campbell soup cans. My choice to present his work is based on his subject matter and color selections. Some of Andy’s works portray identical scenes or people repeated various times on canvases, where the only variation between each is a different bold color selection. The repetition on the canvases was done with the use of a silk-screen. Andy’s choices of colors were what conveyed his message and feelings. Whether he chose to summon a melancholy aura, express his rage for a particular topic or simply painted what was near him, he allowed his differences in hue tell the story for him.

The feeling that I get from his self-portrait seems to evolve every time I look at it. The changes in the colors, whether the images are “solarized” or not, convey a message of gloominess/despondency or a superficial façade of happiness that Andy used to put on… although he was not truly understood in his times. Some may argue that even in our present day whether many of his works and the mystery surrounding his "seriousness" towards some of his subject matter was in fact legitimate. Art lovers, critics and the masses speculate as to what the meaning are behind his masterpieces while others regard them as rubbish. Either way the world will never see another Warhol... an artist whose influence we still see today in pieces ranging from potrayals of Che Guevara to "Warhol-esque" t-shirts with Obama's face emblazoned on them.