Boondocks Babylon

I have recently completed a new painting, oil on panel, 18 by 24 inches.

This painting has been on the easel a bit longer than most, in part due to my schedule but also because it is fraught, fraught from fraught inspiration.

This fraught inspiration being the fetus, the abortion debate. Life. I will not  delve too personally into the abortion debate, suffice to say I am Roman Catholic, Catholic , with the orthodox perspective but also, through personal experiences, aware of the nuance, sensitive to the subtlety of this delicate matter.

That said, possessing this awareness, wary of the many prisms of this hard and sharp stone , I was taken aback by the cold callous attitude of friend, a dinner guest, who when the fraught topic of abortion, the fetus particularly , was (ill-advisedly)raised made an off hand comment that I found unsettling. We were speaking of the fetus, of its being and meaning and to this friend, from the very minute of conception to the very moment of birth, it was in her mind “Nothing”.

In her mind, a “mere blob of cells”.

I confess I was so startled by this shocking statement, its lacking of nuance, empathy, tenderness, that I found myself with tears in my eyes. So fraught  is this topic and yet for her  to so confidently sweep away all concern, all subtlety, all compassion  into the dustbin, into Nothingville, pained me deeply.  

My shock passed, the dinner ended convivially enough, yet secretly I was planning this painting…the friendship however has since faded away. 

As a boy, I was one of those anti-abortion protesters, I was gifted at sign making, my priest was especially proud of my efforts, he made quite the fuss. I glowed from the attention and was fierce in my youthful dedication. Images such as this poster below were  particularly inspiring. 

I am still moved and inspired. It is all very complicated yet not it seems for my former friend; yet she is incorrect , this no mere blob. That, if nothing else, seems clear to me.

 

 

A newly finished painting, still drying on the easel : “Zzyzx Road”, 2024, oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches .

 

 

 

This latest painting was inspired by our 2022 cross-country move from Los Angeles to Chicago.  Just one day out and we found ourselves stuck in LA worthy traffic, idling  for hours in an apocalyptic landscape, a tractor trailer aflame at the Zzyzx Road exit ( an exit exactly to where??).

The truck spewed a noxious pea green smoke.

The intense August desert heat beating down upon our failing rental truck , A/C flickering, our aged pug Viola vulnerable to the hellish environment and outside our window we had just passed giant ice cream cone stands, beautiful old mobile homes left to the elements, a surprising number of erectile dysfunction billboards and most curiously an abandoned sail boat , docked in sand .

It was a moment in time , one of quite a many moments, that inspired our Fleeing Babylon in the first place . When traffic did begin to move along on, that other great Babylon , LasVegas loomed ahead .

Further inspiration and another painting perhaps .

I had scribbled down sketches as the truck bumped along, securing mentally paintings I knew I needed to make ; paintings as reminders of the desert, of despair, of sham, of worldliness and also humor .

I didn’t begin the actual painting until this last July, but had been mulling  the composition about  in my head.

 

 

I had left this painting for a week at 2023’s end, allowing the holidays to distract, hoping to reset my eyes. Returning to the studio after that break, I realized it was indeed finished .

Of course I couldn’t not add a few more brush strokes .

Details follow:

The geometric forms, the castle-like structures were inspired by what  I saw as we whizzed by.

The figure of Death at the camera , filming the polychromatic horror show was inspired by the very final chapter of Thomas Mann’s  Death in Venice, where the central character Gustav van Aschenbach, dying upon the beaches of a plague stricken Venice, is filmed by an abandoned movie camera. A haunting, perversely humorous ending for anyone seeking worldly fame.

What really brought a chuckle was, while driving for hours through the bleak and sterile godless land, this casino sign popped up, my thought:Exactly!

I knew it would make it into the painting somehow, almost titled the painting Terrible, Not Good.

And that is that!

Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a more obviously  personal  work than I usually make, the Pater Noster above is less the Lord’s Prayer and more directly “our father”, which is how my siblings and I address the man that sired us- never “dad”, etc.  Inherently resistant to public psychoanalysis it is enough to say that my father was a troubled man, a frequently, shockingly violent man, who could smile one moment and fly into a brutal rage the next. Needless to say fatherhood did not suit him very well , yet he had six children with my mother, I am the oldest, and went on to sire other families with other women. We are now irrevocably estranged, have been for at least forty years. Yet he haunts my dreams, positioning himself as both a fearsome tormentor and ambiguously attractive figure. Again, public psychoanalysis I will pass on, allowing the painting to speak for itself .

The image depicts one particularly painful memory, the brutality  of the incident further scarred with humiliation for my younger brothers, always eager  to curry favor with this mercurial figure, took great delight  in my debasement. My father’s fury became more focused upon me as I entered adolescence , I was developing into a more obviously gay boy, my mannerisms most likely more fey than my military bred  father could tolerate. I struggled profoundly with the horror of being homosexual, being a devout Catholic , I arranged mid-week confessions for the faintest of “impure thoughts”.  I confessed as well my struggles with my brothers. 

In what seemed a stunning betrayal they immediately revealed to my father all I’d confessed. Like a raging bull he stormed into our shared bedroom and the beating began, the humiliation enhanced in being told to strip down. The howls of laughter as the pummeling went on ring in my ears to this day.

 I hope with this painting as testament that ringing mutes, such is my aim, for the making and the unusual explaining of my work.

 

Tender moments must have been shared between us, I was his first born, he was a young man, this photo of the two of us attests to that. (Although I am a Junior to his Leonard Greco Sr., I was called Toby.)

I see even in this sweet memento the Minotaur in the wings.