Category: Vader – seriously

30 x 40 in, pen, ink, gold and silver wash on hot press board, 2019

Click on the image or here for a super high-resolution of the image.

TLDR: Darth Vader helmet, the Man and the Machine, Infinity, Mobius, the dark side in each of us, our fathers, our symbiosis with the machine, man and his creation, life and death, eternity and infinity, ideal/idea/intact vs. material/life/decay.

Turned out Humpty-Dumpty II is difficult to photograph because I decided to use shiny ink washes, gold and silver. In the process of photographing it I figured I may give this drawing a few more incarnations, perhaps one in a shiny black ink or paint, as is the Darth Vader helmet, which would be too obvious. The other incarnation was suggested to me by a friend, to do just the stains without the lines. So here is the thing about drawing – I like how it makes me feel. I can’t possibly give up on drawing lines because without the lines this wouldn’t be my drawing, it would be just artwork. I don’t want to make artworks. I want to make drawings. These drawings are maps of my synapses, it is the tubes and the wiring inside my brain. The hallow cavities of the hands are maps of the hallows of the inside of my own skull, and the hollows of the eye sockets. They are not that pictorially but spatially. I do not trust the shapes but I do trust the space between and of the shapes. This is basically a map, the spatial connections between things, between myself, my hand and the machine, between myself and the pictorial representation of the modern myth.

There are a number of hidden maps in this drawing – one is the symbol of infinity, the number 8, or the infinity symbol which is the 8 horizontal. This is also the egg, the Humpty-Dumpty from the nursery rhyme, which is also the primordial and non-divided cell containing all the DNA strands in it, and all the potential for life. The map of the father, the Darth Vader helmet, the modern myth but also the very ancient myth of the creator and his offspring. This is also the map of the man and the machine, the potential of beneficial or malevolent symbiosis between the man and the machine, between man and his own creation. The shiny ink is a little too tongue in cheek machine allusion, maybe unnecessary. I do overthink and overdraw my drawings, at least in this instance.