I don’t normally write long form blog posts about my paintings or any pieces of work really but I thought I would start doing so in 2020.
Before getting into my latest painting I must first touch on the series I’m working on. In 2019 I had the idea to create a series of works where I would fuse elements derived from significant paintings in art history with familiar modern media elements including, but not limited to, music, anime, video games, and film iconography. The settings of the works would be the fictional world of Onion City, a place heavily inspired by my home town of Chicago, as well as the many places I’ve experienced in my life. The subjects of the series would be none other than my original characters who I’ve been developing for a few years now. This series is a very exciting way for me to create works of fine art that bring together my many interests, influences, inspirations, and original characters in one original setting. Initially the idea was that this series would be strictly for a solo exhibit but after working on 2 pieces I’ve come to realize this could be my “thing”.
The “thing” I’m speaking on is that which makes a piece “your” piece with “your” style. I create a lot of different things and I work on various creative projects. But each of those projects serve their own purpose. For example, my original comic book, Onion City Chronicle, is meant to serve as my creative outlet where I tell the story behind each of my original characters and bring people into my world of Onion City. It’s a story set in a cyber punk fantasy world of tomorrow that will deserve its own blog post once finished. Now, I may create larger illustrations and paintings of the characters from Onion City Chronicle, and those larger pieces may be based on cool comic panels that I want to see fully rendered. After all, I present my art as something that is very narrative driven where different pieces can represent panels within the same story board. With all of that said, moments in life will always inspire different things. A new film, a new song, or the discovery of an old classic work may get my mind flowing and what better way to express those inspirations than through an endless series that I’ve named, renamed ,and named again, only to land on the following name of “Future Nostalgia,” for now at least.
It went from “Nostalgia”, to “Nostalgia ULTRA” to “Nostalgia 89” and now “Future Nostalgia”. The biggest influence on the name of this series is Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia ULTRA. Nostalgia ULTRA was the name of Frank Ocean’s debut mixtape. This was a very important album for me in my college years and I feel it stood the test of time as it is still a project I go back and listen to. Maybe I do it for the nostalgia factor, who knows . Overall, I felt like the whole aesthetic, the themes, and the nostalgic media elements within this project give this surreal feeling that is truly unique. The songs focused on relationships, personal reflection, and social commentary and that is what I want to do most with my art. Basically I want my art to give people the feeling I have when listening to Frank Ocean, I know crazy right?
To sum things up before we move on, I really just want most of my fine art pieces to live in the space of the “Future Nostalgia” series. I want my fine art pieces to feel like album cuts, my rendered original illustrations to feel like mixtape releases, my fan art work to feel like a freestyle, and my self portraits to feel like Drake’s “time stamp in (blank) city”-songs.
Now let’s get into the latest painting, which I’ve named “Bad Dreams Every Night”. The big reveal is here!
This piece is formally the second in the series, as last year’s piece “Stop Trying to Be GOD” was the first. You can view the first painting here.
With this new piece, I was heavily influenced by a few things. I actually sketched the following concept out shortly after the murder and death of the Florida artist XXXtentacion.
After XXXtentacion passed, I was listening to his music more than I had when he was alive, and more specifically the song “Everybody Dies in Their Nightmares”. For whatever reason that song seemed to hit hard in that moment. The vibe of the song just made me think of bad dreams in general and being unable to move when the bad guy was coming for you in the dream. It’s like someone casted “disable” or “immobilize” on you in a Final Fantasy game, and you ran out of the right potion to remove the ailment. That was for my nerds out there, but, moving on, at the time when I sketched this concept, I was also looking into classic paintings and more specifically the painting “Massacre of the Innocents” by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.
This piece is a violent depiction of the biblical massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem but what really drew me to it was the bold colors, the drama, and the terror that was depicted in the faces of the characters.
For my painting, I wanted to challenge myself to portray a sense of terror and fear in the faces of my characters while using color to set the scene. I wanted to give off a dark vibe even though I was using brighter colors. The concept at the end of the day is that of a bad dream. We’ve all had them, and I’m sure they can vary but the common theme is that when you’re having the bad dream you’re always wishing to wake up. The piece depicts 2 afraid characters in the foreground and one character yelling in the background as he is being swallowed by darkness with the eyes of my infamous night demon characters above him. I could definitely say so much more but I want you all to experience and interpret the work for yourselves. I want to hear what drew your eyes first and where your eyes are staying as you digest the image. DMs, emails, and social media comments are welcome.
When figuring out the name for this piece I can’t recall if I came up with the name “Bad Dreams Every Night” before or after having 3-5 bad dreams in a row during one of the weeks I was working on it. I may have been playing with the idea of using that name and then it made all the more sense to call it that. Life imitates art and art imitates life after all.
This painting along with the first painting in the Future Nostalgia series are for sale. These paintings mean a lot to me and it would make me very happy to see them live in the homes of a collector who enjoys my work.
Click the images below to be redirected to the shop:
Lastly, you can watch the full process video of this painting by clicking here!