Sorceror Series: With Death on Your Back, Turn the Page

So this one was not inspired by music or women. More than anything this painting is a commentary on the constant that is change. A few years ago I was obsessed with the writer Octavia Butler. She died recently and it is truly a great loss. She was one of the first authors after Anne Rice that wrote a vampire story I enjoyed. But more than that her works were about the difficulties of existence and how our ability to adapt to change was our greatest asset while our inability to accept change and difference our greatest weakness. Read anything by her. Also the phenomenal Sandman series by Neil Gaiman strongly affected my thoughts as well. But the greatest inspiration for this painting is the Invisibles comic series by Grant Morrison. I can not sing the praises of this series and its life changing effect. During the five year run of the series in three incarnations, I became gainfully employed, began acting again(for a moment), traveled cross-country, went to graduate school, graduated and began working as a college professor. And much of that change occurred because of those funny books. Grant Morrison broke the fourth wall repeatedly during the work but more importantly he used the structure of the graphic narrative to explain his view of the structure of reality. And how you can get the cheat codes. Now I am not a proponent of Chaos Magic, like Mr. Morrison but the power of the word, the symbol and belief is a hell of a thing. More than anything I named myself a Sorceror because of the Invisibles. You know the things all around us that we cannot see because we have not discovered a name for it or so use to it being there we no longer pay attention. Fear is my greatest enemy. It makes me wait when all I have to do is move forward. The greatest fear I had was death. The unknown unseeable ending. But on the otherside, well from this view, is only the glaring white of possibilities and the new. Like a blank sheet of paper before I draw. Something is always there, it just needs the trigger. Like change. If you do not like what you are then become something new. We do it everyday.
The Sorceror stands in the desert his past blocked by the scourge of death, his spirit one with the universe, and in a moment of epiphany he finds the cheat codes, he sees the structure of reality, he understands the cheat codes. He turns the page. And if nothing is there... he'll make something.

The Struggle Continues.