Strange Love
In my latest series of drawings, paintings, and other media, I’m working to make symbols of the horrific beautiful and seductive. I was inspired by the general malaise, anxiety, and fear that we are experiencing during these strange and frightening times since the end of the cold war and the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 to our current adventurism in the Middle East. To borrow the subtitle form one of my all time favorite movies (the late Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.Strangelove), This is how I am learning to stop worrying and love the bomb. I’m using technical drawings of weapon systems as symbols of our power, arrogance and ignorance. I am also drawing influences and strategies from commercial advertising design, toy packages, and lingerie design patterns.
As a young boy all I wanted to do was draw pictures of jet planes and helicopters. I would collect books about these machines and spend hours reading about what their capabilities were. I was an airplane nerd. I admit it. My father had a lifelong career doing secret work for the aerospace /defense industry, so the war machine literally put food on our table. My feelings about weapons proliferation and war have changed considerably since my younger days. I now view our military and foreign policy with much fear and disdain. I am in a peculiar position of loving the machines, fearing what they do, and despising what they stand for.