“Suicide Twins” is a diptych created in the beginning months of the initial Covid 19 quarantine in Canada.
I think like many people, I took the initial few weeks of the first Covid 19 quarantine as a welcomed break from the grind and chaos of hustling through my life. I had spent so many years working and moving and working and moving and working and moving some more that when we were first told that we had to hunker down I was so exhausted from my life that I felt relieved to have a break from it all. I did work during these first few weeks, but they were small flip paintings consisting mostly of celebrity portraits with a few small commissions. I put my personal work on the backburner. I knew that my work needed to change but I wasn’t quite sure how and I took this time to surrender any stress related to my career and clear my head.
Throughout my life these times of respite have always proved to be useful and have often led to new paths emerging from the stillness. Like stepping away from a picture to see the whole scene and seeing things you hadn’t seen before or looking past the tip of your nose and seeing a whole world you’ve neglected to acknowledge.
After a few months of diddling around I began to feel the direction my work needed to take and was getting excited about creating new pieces again. I even started working on changing old paintings that I felt didn’t quite live up to the aesthetic or concept I was going for. In all my newfound enthusiasm there was one lingering problem. It became very clear that this pandemic wasn’t going away any time soon and that realization led to my creating the concept for “Suicide Twins”.
Over these weeks, as I watched the evolution of the pandemic being reported from all over the world certain truths became clear to me. I no longer desired the superficial life I had spent so many years working and moving toward. I now desire land, gardens, trees, clean water, a slower pace, less noise, more peace. I desire to be self-sustaining, utilizing natural renewable resources and eliminating my reliance on the government or corporations for food, shelter, heat, or sustenance. I desire joy and happiness derived from serving myself, my community, and my family. I desire a deeper connection with the God of my knowing. And I desire to create work that exemplifies these objectives.
Bearing witness to the extent of what humans have done and continue to do to our planet, Mother nature’s revenge, humans addictions to power, the anxiety and distrust of our governments, the chaos of our “new worlds” being created in front of our eyes, new rules being made every other day, those same rules changed every day in between led me to question my existence, but also what this new world mean to the little humans in my life? How will their lives and freedoms be affected, what opportunities will they have – if any? All this transpiring while being trapped in a town that I was dreaming of moving out of months before the quarantine hit. Oh, the horror.
That first quarantine seems so long ago now. This worldwide chaos that has been created is very unfortunately starting to feel, dare I say it, normal. “Normal” a term I vowed never to allow to cross my lips as this Brave New World has taken shape. Which led me to my final questions represented in this painting, what is my part in the creation of this world, how can I take responsibility for myself and is it too late? Suicidal ideation addressed as a symptom rather than an illness.
“Suicide Twins”, is a narrative about taking ownership of my fate as I’m the one who created it, and albeit painful, accepting the outcome due to the choices I’ve made throughout the course of my life, while also recognizing the possible destruction of humanity as we know it, metaphorically and quite conceivably literally.
The twins aren’t twins at all, they are the same person, a self-portrait, and like most things in life there are two sides to their story. The twin on the left is blowing a bullet into the twin on the right’s face. They are both standing in the same environment, a desolate wasteland where a dead river and atom bomb connects the two paintings together. The twin on the left represents the identity that wilfully hurts itself. It’s the little voice inside our head that says, “I probably shouldn’t do this”, but then does it anyway, knowing the damage it will cause and not caring. It’s our destructive side. Taking pleasure in the pain it causes because it’s all it knows.
The twin on the right is the identity that accepts it’s fate and is bracing for impact, knowing the pain I just created for myself and waiting for the blow. She’s the part that is beyond remorse and shame and as she accepts her fate she also acknowledges her death by her hand. On the one hand she’s created the chaos in her life and has created her own suffering and on the other hand she’s accepted this reality and is ready to die rather than continue to live this way and is bracing herself before impact. The image has been captured in time, right before the bullet connects with her face because until that bullet connects there is always time to change. She can choose to live her life differently. She can choose to move, step away from the destruction and build something new. It’s not over yet.
The atom bomb in the background represents where our world is headed if it continues down the path humans have been laying. The alien ship in the left tableau (added after this photo was taken) represents the glimmer of hope. Some alien believers believe that aliens have saved human from destruction on several occasions throughout our existence, destroying bombs in midair.
Admittedly a dark representation of myself and the world, but I believe that unless we take responsibility for ourselves in every way, humanity (myself included) is destined to repeat it’s mistakes over and over again until it’s inevitable destruction. But as long as we have consciousness, we have hope. We can always choose to wake up and live better lives in the morning. The power is within. Use the force.