dracula’s wives
2005: Return to Horror
In 2005, it had been two years since I had actually done any horror-themed paintings. Considering that in 2002, it was horror music themed, and that the year before it was an 80s theme, it had been almost five years. So, clearly, it was time for horror.
Typically, I try and work new friends we’ve made that year into the paintings, and we had started hanging out quite a bit with the members and significant others of the band the Red Stanleys. I had grand plans for all of the Stanleys to be in these paintings, but ran out of time. So this year, I got to finish the project I had planned for ’05. Originally these were to be in three separate paintings, but the theme this year necessitated that I combine them.
Background on the 2005 paintings
Like the years prior, I had collected a list of friends who I wanted to be in the paintings, and sent out e-mails asking who wanted to be what. I claimed vampire, and I can’t remember if Trish chose to be Samara from the Ring before or during the project.
There was a high amount of movie-themed paintings, and I suppose that says something about how cultural stories are passed along, or concepts are introduced, or I should say, were introduced since so much of that happens on the web now. That actually inspired my next year’s theme and I believe was the beginning of me choosing a theme a year in advance. So, yeah, I know what 2009 will be already.
I didn’t want to just rip-off movies in 2005, so I put some thought into the paintings and tried to pull out what makes each type of monster or movie special.
I don’t know how well the paintings conveyed this, but they helped me make some decisions when doing them.
Here they are:
Carrie – coming of age
Halloween – empowerment
Hellraiser – temptation
Dracula – sexuality
Zombies – allegory (commuters are zombies, get it? you ride the train to work and tell me it’s not true)
Chucky/Timmy – satire
Ring – terror
Chainsaw Massacre – gore
These are what I see in these movies (or movie genres in the case of zombies) not what I’m trying to say. Like I said, it gave me structure.
It was a lot of fun, I learned some things about horror movies, and the painting I did of me with three Trish’s is consistently people’s favorite painting. The idea came from the intersection of me always telling Trish the only way she could be better is if there were two of her and my thinking about how I wanted to be Dracula.