"1000 Cuts" Painting

My given name is David Lloyd. I go by the name joe dog as an artist, its my metaphor for the survivor I am, its the name of the artist in me, the creative part of me, the fighter in me. I've always been an artist, but didn't follow it through until a couple of years ago. I never believed in myself enough. I did what I thought I should, what I thought was expected instead of what I really needed to do. Then two years ago I was given the opportunity of time and space, so I tried being an artist on for size and found it fitted, I felt right. I've made art to heal my mind, a therapy to deal with fear, anger and hurt, to find and describe the light in me. Doing art, making it, putting oil on canvas or pen to paper is emotional. I thought it would be easy to do, but was surprised to find its not like a job, like I was used to doing, a production line where you complete a piece of work and then do another. I've found art to be a process, I can't force it, I have to wait to feel the need to create, then I have to be courageous and make the first mark on the canvas and then the next and the next as all the internal critics hurl abuse at me, until the piece is done and my mind is quiet and I can see what I've created. Looking at what I've made shows me something about who I am and what I am, and how far I've come. I'm a self taught Artist, I went to technical college as a teenager instead of doing art A level and then did Sociology instead of an Art degree, becuase I didn't believe I was an Artist then. Twenty years later I can see who and what I am, and I'm happy. I love works by Klimt, Gieger, Escher. I'm inspired by love and truth, the possibility of world peace, as cliche and as unfashionable as that sounds. I muse about the metaphysics of life, the why? of it all, faiths, beliefs, magic and energy systems like meridians and lay lines, I wonder if they are they real. Have we just fogotten how to use them? There must be something in it? The cycles and loops of life, the world and the universe, is it a virtual machine? I've been mulling these questions over in my mind as I think about my next pieces. joe dog