A Musing #38

I woke up to an amazing email sent half way across the world. Turns out someone is writing about/researching me for their high school project all the way in the states. If you’re reading this, I can’t promise you that my nonsense will get you an amazing grade but you made my week. This is just the first of many instances this will happen in my life. If you are a student and want to use me a subject, go for it. As for sources, you can have your teacher call me if they call bullshit when your footnote says “Armando Cabba’s Mouth”.

Toy was the subject of the email and I explained it briefly there so I’ll go into more here. Each self portrait is inspired by my mood of the day. It’s really rare that I’ll have one planned out ahead of time. Even when I do have some idea in my head of how I want to execute the piece, it never turns out how I picture it. If I’m going to get all classical with art terms, they’re done mostly Alla Prima which translates to “at first attempt”. Wet on wet like a Slip N’ Slide. They’re completed on the spot. Sometimes I put them aside to dry to do some detail work later on or I just hide them for weeks or months at a time till I feel I can do something with it again. A new identity is revealed with each painting. It’s me but not the same version of me.

With social media it’s become too easy to just post selfies and pics of ourselves looking wonderful. I’m painting what’s honest no matter how scary it may be. Darkness exists in all of us and this isn’t a new concept. You can ignore it all you want but you have no idea how much you can gain if you work with it. I’m beyond down with my demons. I’m in a group chat with the bastards. The more you feed on them, the less they feed on you.