Theme 4: Deaf

I drew my entry for this week’s theme –deaf –immediately after my previous post. I had been looking at paintings by this one artist, Michael Hussar, and his work is this integration of the grotesquely surreal with an absolutely divine classic painting style. Definitely check him out; his work is both disturbing and fascinating, and it all makes for this ridiculously cathartic experience.

Another friend had also linked me to two other artists -- David Spriggs and Xia Xiaowan --and they both do these paintings on glass. One of them paints by layer –each piece of glass becomes a new layer for the painting and when stacked on top of each other vertically, the set of glass sheets becomes this eerie, dreamlike composition.

Anyways, these three artists were in the back of my mind as I responded to ‘deaf.’ ‘Deaf’ is in its most obvious definition the quality of not being able to hear. And yet, deafness is not an immediately noticeable characteristic (though the use of sign language may but not always be indicative of this). So how could I interpret this characteristic? Deafness can be an integral part of someone’s identity, and there is a whole community of the deaf. Deafness thus becomes a culture; it transcends the initial impression of a disability and fashions a more vivid way of life with the most visual form of language.

I decided ultimately to depict a surrealistic manifestation of deafness by portraying the head of a figure without ears. I focused especially on the flaps of skin around the gaping hole where her ear could be, so that her face itself almost becomes a mask. Through this mask-like quality of her face, combined with the way her lips are bruised and her eyes are closed, I hoped to create and convey a sense of inward contemplation. The figure feels no need to open herself to the world; her mouth is half-closed, her eyelashes fan out and most obviously, she lacks ears. She is thus her own system; and in exercising her ability to internalize herself, she becomes the physical representation of internal reflection. It is her deafness that confers upon her this ability to block out external distractions in order to achieve focus, and it is through this deafness that her mind can exceed ours in scope and breadth.

So. Here she is below:

Charcoal on paper, 16” x 20”

Also, an interesting thing I began to notice while executing this piece:

As I began to draw, the girl began to resemble one of my good friends who was my muse for about 3-4 years, and I have a couple of paintings and drawings of her that to me mark my progression as an artist. Anyways, this piece ended up having an eerie resemblance to one of the charcoal drawings I had done of her two or three years ago. I had entered it into a competition and had spent a ridiculous amount of time on it. Here it is below:

Charcoal on paper, 18" x 24"

The thing is, I think I drew her so much that when I drew the response to ‘deaf,’ this girl’s face just appeared out of my sketch. It was totally an unconscious thing, and it was a pretty bizarre thing to happen. Given that it was about 4 in the morning at this point, I think it was all both my conscious mind and my subconscious could handle.