When Ann brought this home from the flea market, my first impression was that this was just an angry big eye painting – maybe a copy of a 16th or 17th century work. After awhile, it began to bug me that it was glowering at me. There is a simmering tension in the face, intensely cold, with deadpan eyes that nevertheless somehow convey anger. When you drop your gaze to the mouth, then back up to the eyes, the expression fleetingly appears to flit between seriousness and amusement, but it could just be your own mind playing tricks. Maybe he was joking after all, like the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas, ‘you think I’m funny? I’m here to amuse you?’As you move about the room, the eyes follow, hammering you with disapproval!  This tension is palpable – a personal warning to the viewer!

So I threw a nun’s habit on him to see what he would do about it.  He tried to leap out of the painting to get at me, so I knew I was pushing his buttons! To jack the tension up even more I gave him an Uncle Sam style pointing finger and and arm cocked with a piece of flaming coal.  This effectively turned him into an avenging transvestite Christmas angel so I wrote -’ Have you been good this year?’ ‘I will only hurl this coal at your head if YOU feel you deserve it!’ This puts the ball in the viewers court and makes the painting all about them.  Makes them the decision maker.  DO you deserve to have the coal flung your way? I also wrote -‘Well do ya punk?’

I softened the edges with Christmas iconography just enough, so that you can get out of the room unscathed, that is, if you exit walking backwards with your eyes on the painting, because you know, if you take your eyes off, that cocked arm is going to let loose and it’s aim will be dead on.

Click on the link below this painting if you want to see a long-winded video deconstructing the piece.

POSTBREEN

To buy this painting on Ebay, go HERE.

To see a long-winded video describing my thought process while painting this piece, go HERE.