Saturday, March 14, 2009

Ken Bastard adopts the Battered Bunnies

Mr. Bastard and I will be debuting our first piece in a series of Battered Bunnies who've found themselves in rather challenging predicaments, modeled after horrifying, real-life events. To be quite honest, some of the images have been too much for me to really study. When doing this project, we agreed that some of the paintings I'd only be able to "illustrate" the bunny's part and would have to find a way to separate myself from the rest of the tragedy portrayed in these images... One of the reasons I agreed to this (aside from the facts that I hold Ken in high esteem as an artist and successfully grumpy/miserable sonofab*tch) is that we have a similar sense of humor when it comes to plight. Life is suffering. That's that. I think that you can either give in and give up or make light and find a way to make it bearable. This isn't to say that I find any of the original pictures to be anything less than full of suffering and worthy of many moments of silence for all the suffering endured. BUT, had a cartoon bunny been involved, instead of turning off my brain to these injustices (bc of their grotesque, inhumane nature), I might have noticed them, internalized them and....who knows? Maybe I'd be more humanitarian if the shock value of the original photos were lessened. That being said, some might think this is all a sick joke... As far as I'm concerned, it's not.
Come to the closing party at LITM and see the first (and tamest) in the series we'll be presenting soon. Decide for yourself...