Southern Brutality

For a few years I have been much more inclined to represent something from a more voyeuristic viewpoint. The silhouettes are suggestive and even graphic and satisfy my need to get the feeling across quickly, like the universal imagery of street signs. This is represented in my figures and their vulnerable state, by being nude or inverted. I often wonder if strength is found in the gain of power or the loss of it, perhaps both.

My paintings are movie stills of forgotten moments existing somewhere between the ethereal and a bloody mess. Some are literal and some are shadows. Mystery explores the dark side of the Southern woman in her chamber, perhaps before an accident happens, or just after.

Kiki Blood: La Tragedia

“God bless performance art!" exclaimed a man in the audience during Kirstin Mitchell's November 3rd performance at the Local Businessman Gallery, Castleberry Hill Art Walk. Her art is connected with a character "Kiki Blood". The show started with a cloud of smoke on the Peters Street sidewalk out of which "Kiki" comes, shod but otherwise naked and stained with blood like body paint. The near freezing weather and the streetlight lit sidewalk set an intense atmosphere including art-walking people wearing arty clothes, spiked heals, winter coats and carrying drinks. Kiki crawled along the run down buildings sometimes lying down on the ground in the cold. Eventually she reached the gallery door and entered its’ window where a stage was set with a water filled tub, clothes and lacy curtains. She posed slowly while the audience remained outside in the cold. Karen Tauches dressed in black and white as a maid entered and held Kiki in comforting compassionate postures, then left.

Kiki slowly took courage, washed the bloodlike paint off her naked skin and started to get dressed, makeup and the rest. At the end she was clean and wearing normal women’s clothes fit for the art walk. It was like stripping backwards. As people in the audience changed positions and made their comments no one probably saw every detail (like in life). There was a male attendant dressed in black and white (John Lowther) and alleged allusions to Italian movie lore. I thought of the scene as a birth depiction. The smoke would represent conception and the naked bloodstained body the baby on her way to the bath out of which she comes dressed and proper. -ronnog seaberg

Kirstin Mitchell runs. See Kirstin Run. Run, Kirstin Run. See kiki walk. And he would have gushed to me, "My Heavens Mate, Brilliant, brilliant review!" to which I would graciously half tip my hat and limply wave him away, "yes, yes, thank you!" - jeff dalhgren