while researching anthony Van Dyke i found his sketches and paintings entitled "The Taking of Christ". it depicts the moment judas kisses jesus in the garden to specify him to the soldiers. that has taken on its own life in my painting of jesus and judas. think: fairy tale pallete, but it looks very "Gone with the Wind" and its gay men. i'll try to take pictures tomorrow.

my painting class has been a bit of a struggle this semester. i have been all over the map with materialsn techniques and content. as we wind down this first semester and as i try to pull my thoughts together for next week's critiques i would like to make some posts to organize my thoughts.

From my traditional media class i discovered Walnut ink. that has made its way into painting with the addition of acrylics and some watercolor pencils.

From my new media class i have begun to play with Judas.

i am adding a link to National Geographic's sit on the Gospel of Judas. super interesting (really nice site)

with the semester wrapping up i haven't had a ton of time to make posts. especially since the original concept for the images and for this blog has been seen through to a conclusion. I say A conclusion because this has started a dancein my head of subjects and images that have spread out into other classes. If this blog is continue it will have to be more of a catch all for the content that is informing my work. the work that was attached to this blog has shown me how energized an clear i get when dealing with my sexuality. for the most part i anticipate that a great deal of the work that i do will have a tone or theme or feel that these initial images have. this blog has helped me to keep things clear so i would like to see this continue.

Today I presented to the class. I had a blast. a couple of times i made jokes or rather what i thought were jokes but no one laughed. which sort of produced this nervous giddy feeling in me and energized me even more. i managed to get laughes a couple of times so i gotta believe they had fun. laughing aside i hope i got across the seriousness i wanted to carry off as well. There is a stereotype of gay men as the source of humor. I wanted it to be fun but i didn't want to be comic relief, or ease up on the "uncomfortable" if there was any "uncomfortable". maybe it is just me but showing pictures of naked men to a room of people on a projector has the potential for "uncomforable". Postcards of Michael were a good idea.

Jack brought up a really interesting spin on it all. through out history its always been the church employing artists to depict what it wants and i was turning it around to use the church to depict what i want. That had me all jazzed. thats a cool way of looking at it.

interesting....

i guess now is the hour of truth. does this continue to exist?

I had to do a saint sebastion. i was told once that he was one of the first male nudes to be painted classically. i no longer believe that but his attachment to the erotisized male body is firmly locked in my brain. he is ussually depicted a beautiful, bound, youth peirced with arrows as such i am not the only gay man that has become attached to him. he is considered the patron saint of plague victims which some websites translate into being the patron saint of aids patients.

thinking in terms of through lines i have been trying to shape some big questions to go with this blog.

"where does shame come from?" is unfortunately a big question on my mind lately.

when does erotica become pornography? is sexuality offensive?

i did a bunch of images of of men with erections with halos and the same glow that the other saintly men have. I titled these "He has Risen" I like the idea of showing christ at the height (pardon the pun) of his humanity. How can we attach "Passion" to this character and expect that he was flacid his entire life. i have not posted them because that is one of the ratings guiedlines for films, erect male nudity warrents an X rating. i wasn't sure how this would go over on blogger so i'm going to wait till after i present to the class to post these. ...but i'm pretty sure that my having to hesitate is wrong.

why?

in full innocence...

are angels cheesey? but they are so much fun! i get such a rush from making them! this is michael. he is the protector of the underdog and the loner. Or so the the web site i just linked to explained. I'm not suer how i creeped out i am by the site...i'm real happy with michael tho

as i come down to the last couple of days before presenting this to the class i begin to if worry i have done enough. if i have cast my net far enough if i have left enough of a bread crumb trail for others to follow. i didn't link every sit to this one. i really don't think anyone would use half of the christian art websites. no one wants to link to a site that really has a "Deep Thoughts" section or "Saint News". Neither did i link to all the court transcripts of obscenity cases in through the 40's and 50's. I found myself starting to just skim them (fruitlessly) looking for direct quotes. if i was bored silly then no one else will go through all this.
i also began to veer away from the original conceptas a whole. when i started to put these images together it felt like i was drawing a mustache on a picture of the pope. it was a laugh. I never wanted to be disrespectful, but sligtly antagonistic? sure. but these images became less about them and more about me. i now prefer to use these catholic images as templates for an image of my own creation rather than trying to recreate an existing masterpeice. there are photos that are just so wonderful that i can't not try to show the world how i see them and what they mean to me. i can react to the beefcake photos and let them take me where they want to go rather than trying to force them into predetermined poses. a couple of times i had to use photos that i really didn't like but they matched poses in classical paintings. The Last Dinner Party became work because of this. The Creation of Man from the Sistine Chapel, which i have been working on for the past few days is being crushed by these restrictions. Moses, on the other hand, i had a blast with and i have another Adam that i have been playing around with that i hope to post by monday. These biblical characters are the gender role models that were imposed upon me as a child. My affinity for them is comfortable and effortless and functions outside of catholisism.