The Remedy

This painting, The Remedy is it's a bit of a clash really, there's this kind of a fight going on here. Um, that wasn't the intention when I started out, but that's, that's where, um, where the, the pulling and, and pulling and pushing kind of took me, um, the, you know, the, the building of the painting started with the, the, kind of the core image on the left of the, you know, sort of poorly rendered, um, female face, which is sort of, you know, I guess a fairly typical, um, a fairly typical way of, of signaling that the person is, is a model, I guess.

For me, that image kind of became a bit of shorthand around, um, around consumer culture and, um, you know, buying things and status and all of that sort of stuff. Just in a, in a general sense, it's kind of doesn't have good or bad attached to it.

It's just, it's kind of just shorthand for, for what that, what that is. Um, and, you know, there's, there's the typical kind of pop up dollar sign sort of poking through. And, you know, the, the image of this, this model is kind of torn and, and there's little things that are, that, um, that are showing through from underneath, you know, the top left-hand corner has kind of like, um, you know, wooden wooden boards that you might find in an old home where, where, you know, the, the wallpapers is sort of peeled away or paint peeled away, kind of revealing sort of its kind of original, basic, um, structure, I guess. Um, and on the right hand side, there's this, this guy, um, that I call the tough, I don't know if that's what he's actually called, but I call him the tough and I, I think he, um, uh, I think it's pretty much the same as, uh, old image, um, from, is it the new Yorker magazine?I think.

Um, so it's the best kind of recollection I have of that, that new Yorker magazine image. I don't think I got it quite right, but I sort of remember this idea of, of the tough with these little monocle, um, peering over the world. And, and here, I think, um, this kind of, this, this image on the left, which really kind of is very much about consumers and, and status. I think, um, you know, when people don't meet those expectations that they have for themselves around, around, um, money and things and status, you know, it can be pretty, it can be pretty upsetting and, you know, the tough is, is here.

Um, and he's here to save us with his, with his pill. And I think where the fight starts to come into it is, is in and around some of the destruction that's kind of happening in that space.

Um, the pill kind of hovers over over the image of that, that, that model, um, projecting out towards us and underneath that is kind of a, um, a few sort of destroyed kind of patches. Um, but then, you know, there's the, the kind of the, uh, the block with the block of sky that's breaking through and, and has the escaping paper plane, that's starting to float out over the painting.

And I think, you know, that's the part where I think the fight is occurring between, you know, between the plane and the sky and, um, and the, and the medication or the pill, you know, the, the, the fight between, you know, taking the pill to solve a problem versus looking for, you know, ideas and the freedom that comes in in ideas. And I think there's a bit of a, I think that's where the fight in the pitcher is occurring.

Um, there's a fair amount of, um, destruction happening in, in, in lots of portions of this painting. Um, but for me, it's, it's really that, that, that battle, um, happening between, you know, the, the, the simple remedy and the one that's maybe a little bit more complicated, but hopefully, um, longer lasting and more freeing.

Um, it's not, again, it's not what the, what I intended to paint, and I, I guess I didn't expect that it would be, um, uh, so, so open in that respect. So it's not a complicated, it's not a complicated picture. Um, even though there's, there's a few different layers, uh, it really is a fairly, um, fairly open battle between these two ways of, of viewing the world.