April 02 - May 14 2022
John Faul: Eating my own Shadow
A personal dream inspired this body of paintings: “It’s very dark at night. I’m on a bicycle and on my lap is the cutest baby girl. Her head is round and full. As I’m passing cars on the road at high speed I saw a very large man running from behind. He’s catching up with us. His face looks bruised and beaten up. There’s blood and open wounds on his face and chest. He cuts us off and as we stop he yells, ‘Pay me $800! Or just give me the baby!’ He opens his right hand and I see he’s holding a very large sharp knife. I know that he’s going to stab me. I tell the baby, ‘Don’t worry, nobody will take you from me!’ And I reach for a gun in my pocket and shoot the man in his head. His entire head blows off. And then we keep on biking. And crows fly overhead and lead the way. Hares run in the fields next to us.”
“Eating my own Shadow” are paintings in mixed media [acrylic, oil, and graphite] on canvasses prepared with rabbit skin glue. With paintings, I find portals to create a language of colour and forms about the content of the dream. The images are physical forms of human and animal, but done with accident and chance. I shy away from the illustrative, but hold on to irrational mark makings. The painted images are imaginary and invite curiosity. The moods of the paintings are melancholic and eery. The images are dualities and not merely emotions painted out as abstractions. The paintings as a gestalt are a deeply subjective perspective of the dream experience. No logical answers are given to answer what the dream means. Questions remain. The vaguely palpable bodies wish to speak, almost touch, if at all.
The dated psycho-analytic unconscious has made its way with new deconstructions and voicings into the contemporary times. Dreams are only one access of how the unconscious is considered in our times. As a visual artist I examine ideas and speculations currently pertaining to a fresh examination of the unconscious.
Artist's Reception: May 13 2022, 5-7pm