Mark Sheeky

"The Bully"

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A painting inspired by a seemingly motiveless violent outburst directed at me. The aggressor seemed to be eternally filled with anger, he felt the need to manipulate and control people due to his paranoia and, beneath this I surmised, fear of attack. As such, this is a psychoanalytic painting, a form of 'projected surrealism', if you will. An exploding volcano is an obvious metaphor for anger, but underneath, I wanted to show the fears and weaknesses that grow, each covered with overlapping layers of psychological rock, preventing their escape through communication, and building up the pressure that is released intermittently in violent bursts of communication. The volcano is holding a stick, a weapon to hit people with but also a phallic reference, for a form of comfort. It is pointing to redirect its negativity on others. The red flag is a reference to a football team rather than socialism or communism. Below, the face collapses into fear and isolation, impotence, which here means a lack of love felt or given. A road, which represent the passage of time, the long road of life, turns into a hand reaching upwards on the right, grasping for a thread, the cord of a balloon which represents childhood, and the balloon is love, tiny and forever out of reach. I developed this painting in unison with its complex, sculpted frame, a surround made from wood, plaster and epoxy resin that looks like rough rock. I wanted to make an image that seemed to burst out of solid rock in the same way as magma from a volcano, thus reinforcing the theme, creating themes within themes. This is my compositional method; to choose a theme and re-represent it in different ways, adding variety to unity, like a musical theme in a classical piece of music. For me, it is structures like this that form the foundation of great art. It is this structural, thematic unity that I consider new to visual art, and this is my pursuit and focus of exploration as an artist.

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