The Meaning
“Pieces of the Puzzle” continues to reveal the tales of my life from the inside out.
Vulnerable
At the very top, in the red background, you will see my baby carriage rolling down a slope and into the middle of heaven and hell. Christ is looking up in suffering towards His Father as His angels look on. Below him are the neurons inside my head being triggered by both Jesus and the devil with a synaptic electric firing from one to the next. To the right, there is a crystal blue lake with palm trees around that prophesize future peace, serenity and finally paradise after all the suffering in this life is over.
Harvester of Death
To the left is Satan as a black hooded harvester of death desiring to destroy my soul. Underneath Him are dead trees with blood coming out from underneath which reveals how much death I have experienced from my family bloodline.
Hurt by Religion
Underneath the neurons of my mind, we see the church that I grew up in and was forced to attend as a child. The twisted-jagged cross with a ball and chain, and a tongue sticking out from the bottom of it reveals what a heavy burden it was for me to endure religious abuse from childhood on. Worst of all, my parents’ religious and authoritarian influence made me sick (hence, the tongue) and this made things even worse. There was not a single good relational attribute about it.
False Pretense
The grandfather clock to the right has a smashed glass door with the pendulum sticking out with a sad crying face on the end of it which grieves all the time wasted under the false pretense of a God my parents never really knew.
Hard Times
To the lower right of the twisted-jagged cross is Mississippi John Hurt who was a famous blues player who I could relate to because he knew about oppression and hard times and how to express them though his music.
Lost Children
To the left of him is Father God holding a lantern going out into the night to look for the lost children of the world (like me) that have been hurt by religion and have a distorted view of who He truly is.
Up and Out
Below him is a lotus flower to symbolize how a child stuck in a broken-down place (the house below it) comes up and out from the wreckage and eventually blossoms through real faith. Just to the left, there is an evil gargoyle guarding my house symbolizing my mother’s personal religious demons who manifested themselves upon me with a motive to never let me out of the wicked relationship I had with her and my father.
To the Beat
The snare drum to the right was a part of my drum set at one time and to me it expressed how I walked to the beat of my own drum through Faith.
A New Direction
Below the snare drum is a steam train shining light on the lotus flower, symbolizing a new spiritual direction I have been traveling, away from the wicked past. Below is a nighttime picture of Kansas City showing where I ended up and where all of this was revealed to me at the time. This was the view I had of downtown Kansas City from my studio in the Crossroads Art District.
The Process
I had no intention of making this piece look like a puzzle, but it came out that way in the end. I was still learning how to sketch and develop contoured lines within each different concept I was trying to illustrate, and this painting helped me do just that.
This piece reminds me of a later one I did called, “Mindstorm, Body and Spirit” because of the synaptic triggering inside my mind. It is also similar to “The Subconscious.”
I remember being heavily influenced by a painting on a live Dire Straits album called Alchemy by the artist Brett Whiteley recorded in the Hammersmith Odeon in London. I was amazed by the album along with this timeless work of art and still am today.