Green Screen.
Newspaper scraps and Mod Podge on a stretched canvas.
July / August 2013.

This was probably my most introspective and contemplative project so far, in my entire lifetime.

I began ripping up newsprint. In reading fragments and phrases, incomplete thoughts and statements began to blend together. I started at the upper left and headed to the right, following the natural instinct of one trying to read. I turned and headed downward and began to spread outward. Themes began to arise. Words jumped out to me. Phrases latched onto each other. I began a dialogue with myself: I discussed employment, occupation, local and federal government, the legalization of marijuana, the process of creation, spirituality, impurity, insecurity… An overarching theme of the abrasive characteristic of opinion, and the necessity of such abrasion became apparent.

As I ripped more paper, I found entertainment in the misinterpretation of images, the colors began to take over. The green screen emerged, I was fooled out of discussion and philosophical introspection and thrust into a world of color and distraction, filled with sexuality, intoxication, voyeurism and material identity: smooth transitions between the inconsistency of what we teach our young and the life we live became recognizably unrecognizable.

Wholly and personally enlightening, the process was.