Halloween Comes Early-Skulls Painting At Art Show

I'm excited to announce that the curator at the prestigious Bridgeport Art Center here in Chicago has selected my painting The Killing Field to appear in a special Halloween/Day of the Dead themed exhibition called The Mystical, The Magical, & The Macabre.

The art show opens Friday, September 19, with an evening reception at Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St., Chicago.

The show remains on view through Friday, November 7. A visit provides a perfect way to observe fall traditions and holidays including Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Souls Day, Samhain, and many more.

Join Me Friday, September 19, At The Opening

Join me at the opening reception, which will be held Friday, September 19, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Bridgeport Art Center's fourth floor gallery.

I will attend the opening, and I hope you'll join me. I would love to see you there and show you my Killing Field skulls painting in person.

About The Killing Field

I created The Killing Field in 1998, during a time when my work frequently focused on skulls, bones, and skeletons as well as related subjects including X rays and Day of the Dead symbolism including sugar skulls.

These pieces explored the range of responses that can come from seeing skulls and bones. Sometimes they can provoke fear, including humans' fear of death and dying (particularly if a life's end involves violence).

Other times, skulls and bones can serve as reminders to make the most of life, which can be all too fleeting. Art across many cultures includes the tradition of memento mori, which literally means "remember you must die." These artworks might take the form of paintings with skulls included among several objects on a table or desk, for example, or even the phrase "memento mori" on a scroll or paper, or they might surface as a skull and bone on gravestones.

In other cases, skulls and bones can inspire humor, often as a way to cope with death's continual presence in the midst of human life. We see this phenomenon annually in Halloween celebrations. It also figures strongly in Mexican art related to the Day of the Dead, especially in works by Jose Guadalupe Posada.

Having explored and reflected on these many traditions in the late 1990s, news about the death of infamous Cambodian dictator Pol Pot in 1998 took on greater significance. News reports at that time included many images of mass graves as well as bones and skulls from some of the estimated 1.5 to 3 million people killed during the Khmer Rouge regime.

The image that struck me most deeply showed piles and piles of skulls. Massive numbers of what once were human heads, attached to actual people, now reduced to only a skull for each to testify to their existence as human beings.

The Killing Field became my response to the genocide and the news coverage of the dictator's own eventual death. I painted it in watercolor in dark, simple colors: burnt umber, raw sienna, and black to evoke the earth to which we all return after death. The white of the paper serving to illumine the skulls and provide the whiteness of human bone. At the bottom, a sliver of ground, red to evoke the blood shed by so many.

In the two lower skulls, the eye sockets contain shadows as well as shapes, as if to wonder what those eyes saw when those people still lived. What do their souls witness now that they are gone from this plane of existence?

Despite the violence that caused so many deaths and so many piles of skulls, in the end there is only stillness. The quiet of death and the passing of vital life force.

In the stillness comes reflection...and the possibility of peace.

Grace, even. May that be so.

More Skulls & Skeletons: Art Expo

You can see some other examples of my skulls and skeleton pieces and other provocative, mysterious art at my Fine Art Expo booth next month.

We'll feature them in a special mini exhibit in addition to my main show of abstract landscapes and colorful flower paintings. 

Join me for this art extravaganza in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood. It opens with a VIP night Friday, October 17, and continues throughout the weekend on Saturday and Sunday, October 18 and 19.

About The Mystical, The Magical, & The Macabre

Bridgeport Art Center's curator, Marci Rubin, conceived The Mystical, The Magical, & The Macabre to highlight art in many media that conjures a sense of mystery, awe, and fascination with the darkness and finds aesthetic beauty in the shadowy depths of humanity's complex existence.

As in The Killing Field, darkness can be associated with fear or anxiety, yet it also provides a place of comfort through stillness and introspection.

This art exhibition explores those contrasting feelings while looking at "what is lurking and lost in the shadows of the human experience."

Rubin sought a range of artworks addressing a wide array of strange and unusual subjects including mystical realities that seem inexplicable and are not immediately apparent to the senses or the mind, the unexplained, alternative spiritual paths,  extraordinary or otherworldly powers, "magic" from harnessing supernatural or mystical powers to create illusions, the spirit of wonder and surprise, exploring the subconscious, and manipulating traditional perceptions of reality. She also welcomed art with themes of death, decay, and darkness to evoke responses from the viewer and thin "the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead."

The result is a show filled with skulls and bones, the eerie and the enchanted, and the uncanny, weird, and wonderful.

Come see it to experience "the dark side" for yourself.

Bridgeport Art Center Location, Hours  

Bridgeport Art Center is a multi-disciplinary creative home for artists, designers, and professionals working across various art forms, media and vocations. It occupies a massive historic Chicago warehouse repurposed to house art galleries as well as artist studios; the Fashion Design Center, Chicago Ceramic Center, Skyline Loft, and  Sculpture Garden Gallery; and several businesses.

Gallery and office hours are Monday through Saturday,  8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 8 a.m. to noon. 

Bridgeport Art Center is located at 1200 W. 35th St. in Chicago. To visit, enter on the building's north side off of Racine Avenue and  34th Place. Parking is available on the north side of the building; visitors may be directed to additional parking areas if needed during large or multiple events.

For more information, call (773) 843-9000.