The pain

This is one of my few pieces of abstract art, and my favourite assignment from a course taught at @comicsworkshop.

The task was to combine text from a song lyric, chosen by other students, with a title from a list of words previously written by me, and use that as a guide to create an abstract piece.

I choose the lyric “I’m not angry, just throwing stones” from "Worry" by @mothermothermusic and "The pain" as title.

The process by which I created it was definitely experimental for me; I totally winged it, which is uncharacteristic for me. It went like this:

1) I both splashed watercolour and dripped it on the canvas (5" x 7" Fabriano Artistico, traditional white, hot pressed watercolour paper) with different brushes.

2) I flicked and shook the canvas to let the watercolour flow on it.

3) I took a series of pictures of the canvas with high motion blur.

4) I let my imagination fly and look for patterns in the pictures that resonated with the lyric and the title. As soon as I saw a demon with a broad scimitar I was hooked. Luckily, a similar pattern was present in multiple pictures, which allowed me to use it twice: for the "I" and the "Angry" top left and top right insets, respectively. A different pattern seemed perfect (with a bit of squinting) for the "Throwing" inset spelled "Trowing", an unforced error due to the phonetic nature of Italian, my first language!)

5) I printed the blurry images, added contours with a 0.5 mm sharpie, and taped them on the canvas.

6) I looked for something for "Stones", and luckily found it directly on the canvas.

7) The last step was to add the lettering and the arrows, and then take a picture of the montage.

I am very proud of this piece, and I find it astonishing how much it really resonates with the feelings I have when suffering shows up at my door. It proved to me the power of the unconscious mind as a source of inspiration.