At first glance, this piece does not look like it belongs in my catalog – floral pieces don’t usually scream rock and rebellion. It’s in the inspiration that this offering starts to make sense on why it could be a corner stone painting of a rock artist.
It started as I was lying in the operating room for a recent surgery. My medical team was asking me about my tattoos and the conversation quickly turned to music. This ultimately led to them letting me pick a song to listen to as they did their final prep work and sent me off to sleep. I asked them to play one of my two favorite songs, “Black” by Pearl Jam or “Paint it Black” by the Stones. The last words I heard as I faded out were – “I guess we don’t need to ask your favorite colour”. The seed was planted with that statement.
While in recovery, I started thinking more about the exchange and about all the bands, albums and songs in rock music that referenced the colour black. I wanted to pay tribute to the colour and its prevalence in the rock genre – but it was extremely tough to conceptualize how to pay tribute to black.
In yet another happy accident, I was simultaneously also trying to conceptualize a completely different piece based on starting new, or a rebirth, due to finally coming out of a very long health battle. I turned to Google to research images and ideas that may symbolize a rebirth, and to my pleasant surprise, the first page filled up with references to black roses as this symbol. It was perfect, I was able to combine a double meaning into a single work – and for the next month this piece “turned my world to black”.
-Stickman
