This is a small piece that I used here last year in a blogpost featuring Richard Thompson’s song Shoot Out the Lights. I showed this piece but didn’t say anything about it which I think was an oversight because it is one of my personal favorites from this particular series. It’s called Two Sides and is part of my Outlaws series from several years back, a group that was influenced by some small Goya works done in carbon on ivory as well as by powerful imagery from some later films of the silent era. Many of the pieces featured a single figure, often holding a handgun, usually in a monchromatic sepiatone. A few, such as this piece, incorporated more color as well as a copper foil border.
Some folks saw these pieces as being a bit scary, with the handgun imagery and the figures often seeming to be peering out (or in, as some saw it) a window. I understood the scary part but not for the same reason as those who saw it this way. They saw the figures as menacing while I saw them as being frozen with their own fears. These figures were the scared ones.
The title of this piece, Two Sides, is a reference to the polar opposites that make up a yin-yang symbol. In fact, it’s composed like a yin-yang symbol. with the light of the hand and gun appearing in the dark shadow in which he stands and the darkness of his face appearing in the incoming light. I see this as representing the light and dark, the good and evil, that resides in everyone. At any one time, we may appear to be more to one side or the other but we normally, and hopefully, exist between these opposing forces. This piece reminds me to temper my darker side when it wants to push outward, to maintain this equilibrium. It makes this a special piece for myself.
Redtree Times 