Black & Blue Painting

"The last two years I've been working intensively on reaching a new level of self awareness. By trial and error I'm getting to know my demons, what my triggers are. Two of my pitfalls are my inner tormentor and my urge for perfection. The two combined make me punish myself constantly, beating myself up, just to try to make the most of myself." Black & Blue was created over a period of about three weeks. I started out with horizontally dividing the "canvas" (which is actually paper on a wooden panel) in light and dark blue, almost black ink, clearly showing the rough brush strokes. I added handwritten notes and pieces of paper, written by me or addressed to me. The notes contain personal thoughts I had over the last year, both positive and negative. I slightly covered these pieces of paper in blue ink and while the ink was still wet I scraped in calligraphic, unreadable shapes with a palette knife. With plain white chalk I added speed and direction. After that I still wasn't content with it. With a 3Doodler pen I created the text 'Damn my inner autocorrect' in neon plastic and pasted it to the collage. I liked the neon and plastic effect combined with the dark blue ink, so I finished the collage by taping the 1 inch edge with bright neon orange duct tape. My abstract works tell (part of) my personal story, they're close-up emotional snapshots. There's no intended social, political or religious story behind these creations other then expressing my own state of mind. But you, the viewer, can experience something completely different in them. And that's okay. We all see things differently.