Mending with Blood was created painfully. My fingers bled in my small summer studio at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The months were counting down and I saw myself leaving school with out a clue as to what was next. I knew I/we, were going back to California.
I thought about the friends I was leaving behind and it began to kill me. I poked my fingers bloody weaving the wire in and out of the small holes.
I remember smuggling in a cooler full of beer past the guards one night. I found that if I made the cooler look like a piece of art, I could get it right by. Besides, they knew me. I was always in my studio. I drank and poked holes in this canvas for hours. I woke up the next day with my fingers swollen from infection and looking at the piece that you see. I took it a few steps further the next day, just to polish it up a little and get the blood off.
This painting has a gold powder mist over it and is just incredible to see in a good light. I poured a half of a pint of shellac on it to seal all of the elements in as well as to seal up the holes that I created in the canvas.
Heart paintings are a way for me to release how I feel.
