The Meaning
“Ball And Shame” tells the story of my early childhood years growing up under the contention of my parents’ relationship and the identity of shame it produced inside me.
Family Falling Apart
The blue house represents my childhood home with my parents in the window with my father pointing his finger of blame upon me for his own life and marriage falling apart. My mother is screaming and blaming him for her own life falling apart (like she often used to do), and my sister is looking on in the other window (on the left) witnessing our family falling apart.
Angel of Light
An angel of light is pointing up to encourage me to look up to God’s Spirit for help (the dove on fire in the left corner). This denotes the first childhood spiritual experience with God I had at around three to four years old at a pre-school (Mrs. Weber’s) I attended.
My Illustrated Auto-Biography
This story is described in more detail in my book: The Secret that Kills/Spirit that Saves.
Holy Tornado!
Years later, after my sister and I had moved out, there actually was a real tornado that came over our childhood home that did severe damage to the property. My mother told me that she thought this was a wakeup call from God to divorce my father and come to Him for help.
“Holy Tornado!” is actually the name of a chapter in my book, if you’re interested in reading more about this event.
The Process
At this time, I was in the beginning stages of writing my book and was also purging a lot of identity issues (related to being trapped in shame) in my twelve-step journal at the same time.
Ball and Shame
This led to me to start sketching the baby with the ball and chain around his ankle, along with the house, angel, and cloud formations with the tornado.
Light of the Spirit
I began to use the wiping effect once again on the blue house, and the clouds (to make them look more dimensional). For example, I applied the blue oil paint inside the rectangles, let it partially dry and then wipe it off with a brush saturated with mineral spirits. After the clouds were done in the same way, I streaked half-dried yellow paint from the dove down to the angel and the baby to create a halo effect.
Influences
Marc Chagall is one of my favorite and influential artists and I love all his works, but one of his illustrations came to mind more than any other, “The Falling Angel“. I used to stare at this piece for hours on end and its influence came out in this piece.