This is work that was done mainly in my teens and early 20s. It’s varied and unusual mix of pieces, some of which still hold up and some of which seem downright embarrassing to me now. Nevertheless, every artist has a history and a story of their development in style and substance. Some pieces are amusing, some are mediocre, some are dark, some are just downright weird. It’s interesting to look back on them and remember what I was thinking and feeling at the time, what was going on in my life. I do a lot less 2D work now than I use to.
I think as artists get older, we lose a lot of the inhibition and earnest creativity we have when we’re teenagers. We learn to limit ourselves by what others perceive as “good” (even if we try not to, it happens subconsciously) and we also just have less internal drama to put onto the page. As our lives settle down, as our personalities become more subtle, so does our work oftentimes. I still enjoy going to high school art shows a lot more than I do professional ones. Teenagers make art that’s radical, weird, interesting, unique, emotional, personal. They haven’t learned to tone it down yet. I fight everyday to recapture just a little bit of that “not giving a fuck” in my own artwork and I miss those days when it wasn’t a fight.
