Fuck You
Digital Painting, Photoshop
2014
What is this painting of defiance? Some great power is challenged and dared by a few small ants in desparate struggle. Have we not all been there, in one way or another?
That aside, there is more to this painting. This one is also a kind of a master study. Not a copy, but painted in the manner of a master. An attempt to get at his ways and secrets, a struggle in its own right.
Art is a game of colonization. Get there first, plant your flag. Become the ism and carve yourself into history. Soldiers colonize land, Apps colonize the mind, Artists colonize the Image. Every discovery of a technique, of an effect is the glory of a conqueror, yet takes no lives.
At the dawn of the 17th century a certain Caravaggio wowed the world with his discovery of the deep shadow, and the world became full of little caravaggisti who painted just like him. Today we call that shadow Chiaroscuro but we might as well be saying Caravascuro.
Caravascuro
At the dawn of the 21st we have Craig Mullins and for a moment the world was full of little mullinsiavisti attempting to paint in his way, and so was I. For many Mullins was the first time to see serious painting beyond illustration and anime. Here was one with ancient wisdom, who could paint in the long forgotten ways of the old masters.
Craig Mullins
The quintessential Mullins is a romantic image of pirates or sci-fi helmets, victorian adventure or something medieval. Made of brushwork bristling with energy, perfectly intuited compositions and rock solid structure. You look at a Mullins, and everything in it clicks and locks into place. The image appears at once unachievable, yet easy to make. Look, every brush stroke is there visible for your eyes to trace. No tricks, just color, value, texture in the exact correct place. In some fundamental way: this looks doable.
And if it's doable then one must! A thousand attempts if that’s what it takes. Go full hermit monk, a thousand punches, under the waterfall.
And so this painting of mine on defiance is a little mullinsianismo, one of my many, and one of my last. Probably my best one. What was left to be done there? The land was colonized and I wasn’t gonna paint a better Mullins. It was time to look elsewhere, but the fundamentals of structure, energy and texture learned from the maestro remain forever with me.
A thousand salutes to Craig Mullins, a master of our age, one of the all time greats.
