Title: “She’s Not There” (with a nod to the song of the same name by the Zombies). 2014. Developed from a sketch done around 2013. Photoshop and graphite.

Concepts reflect a lot of what I was feeling at the time; (descriptive words): facade, subliminal, defiance, poison, forbidden, pain management, twisted passion and intent, misdirection, survival persona, facet, temptress, morbidity, hollow.

Resigned to evil for desires, needs, impulses, and though not malicious in original intent, results stained like a sacrifice of blood for peace. She is acceptance of the inner darkness, made possible through the abandonment of sympathy, naivety, illusion, and social decorum.She is the fiery passion, the intensity of all that burns, and such a flame consumes all else. Retaining only the selfishness, desire, the temptation of moths to a flame, it is the only way to continue on un-extinguished. As they burn, so would she if of similar accelerant made. She summons with a deadly beauty, a sickly sweet decay perfume, and keeps and feeds with a poison like ambrosia, a toxic addiction that is never forsaken.

It is not so far-fetched thus to view a demon as a survival persona.

I leave the extent of her truth and fate to each individual viewer. Is goodness, hope, selflessness adeptly buried away in a survival bargain? Or has it been completely lost altogether? And what are the boundaries of being – is it all you are and have been, or only what you are most recently? Does it include the parts of yourself you’ve disconnected, but that still exist dormant or hidden?

Another song: “Falling in love again” the version sung by Christina Aguilera.

I’m going to start planning to make prints to sell, or cards or whatnot. And I’m thinking of making similar concept ladies to create a collection/set of emotion/persona beauties in various colors.