Red Eye

Red Eye

mixed media on silk screen

9 x 12"

Marius Black

2000

I was still in second year high school when I made this artwork. It was just an experiment and I haven't yet encountered a canvas in my personal art studies. I have seen some, my dad painted when he had the time and I loved watching him paint so I was familiar with a canvas. Though when I encountered a used silk screen it reminded me of what a canvas felt like and wondered if I could have a go at it since I was already making my own comics at the time and was experimenting with a lot of art materials. I had some oil paint that where leftovers of my dad's from his painting days so I had about 4 - 5 oil paints colors. 

I remember when I first opened a tube of oil paint the smell was the first thing that hit me, next the colour of how brilliant it was and then the texture, of how I thought, "Shit, what the hell is this!?" but even with that I still wanted to try it, I really don't remember what was I thinking. All I knew I just really wanted to make something out of the canvas like silk screen I crudely stapled on. The purple-ish color is not oil though, it's a mixture of blue ball pen ink and some paste (I had no white oil paint to mix it with, so...) I didn't really knew if it would stick with the paint, but since it was paste I figured it will hehe. But yeah, when you're hungry for expressing yourself, everything you see is an art material.

And before you know it I was able to make an eye. I remember I was still sketching a bunch of eyes on my sketch pad then, and studying of how different eyes looks like. And at the time A perfect Circle was one the best bands you could listen to on the radio, so naturally I would listen to 3 Libras and the part in the lyrics where Maynard sings... "eyes of a fallen angel, eyes of a tragedy..." is my favourite. Man those are good lyrics there! But yeah I think I was thinking about that when I painted this. That would explain the purple skin on the artwork yeah? Because it's from a fallen angel.