Creative Project #1 Justification: Title of Artwork: “Painting Monsters”

The idea behind this piece stems from an idea that I found quite prevalent in the book “Of Divine Warning: Disaster in the Modern Age.” This idea is that of ‘Disasters’ including Monsters and their representations.

Along with this idea of Monsters, the book’s main focus is the premise called the “sign continuum,” where disaster spreads across society through efforts to evade social responsibility for its causes and consequences.

This is the concept I tried to illustrate with this piece. People, in an effort to avoid taking responsibility for society’s “Monsters,” in turn create more monsters. It is almost as if this is an effort to create “equal opportunity monster status,” to make those initially responsible feel less “guilty” for a lack of better words. This is represented by the white-collar human male painting on a monstrous face on the canvas.

With the creation of new monsters, the ills of society eventually become a normality, which is represented in this piece by the monster painting on the human portion of the face on the left side of the canvas.

It is now unclear what the face started out as. A human made into monster, or a monster seeking its humanity – and a status of normality.