The Meaning

The “House of Entropy” reveals my life growing up in my childhood home. Entropy in a social context means that whatever happens in secret stays a secret inside a family. The parents keep their personal lives a secret from the outside world and teach/demand their children to do the same. This usually happens when the personal relationships inside a family break down from control and abuse.

Childhood Abuse

In the upper right corner is my father beating me with his fist and knocking me down to the floor. The red light above him expresses the hatred and jealousy behind his character and how he led me to destruction.

Cursed Relationships

To the right side of that is a window is a black cat revealing a curse in my relationships with my father and mother.

Skeletons in the Closet

To the upper left is a window with skeletons hanging from my parents’ closet indicating that they hid and denied all their personal issues with one another, myself, and my sister.

Hiding

In the lower left, there is my sister hiding between her bed and dresser, being scared of witnessing the “unseen” black smoke which represents spiritual fear expressing all the wicked ways we were parented and how badly they related to us in our house.

Ignoring Abuse

In the lower right is my mother laying back in a chair hearing the many instances of abuse upstairs in my room and yet doing nothing to protect me from it.

Sympathetic Eye

The front door has bars on it, representing me and my sister as prisoners in our own home and the sympathetic eye of God crying above it because He knows it will never change.

Voices of Compassion

Above the house shows Bono, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa being moved by God with compassion and speaking out with concern for the helpless children that come from abused and broken homes.

Death Cast Out

To the right of this is a ghostly reaper coming out of the roof of the house representing death as Martin Luther commands death to leave the house.

This painting is closely related to another I did years later, called, “Ball and Shame.”

The Process

Initially inspired by Marc Chagall’s “The Blue House”, I decided to illustrate more specific social issues inside of my own childhood home which was actually very close to this shade of blue I used. In the upper right-hand corner of the skeleton closet, I can see where I began to use the wiping method with the eerie color green blended in with black.

I can also see that same method below with the black smoke in my sister’s room with a touch of red inside of it. Shortly after this piece was completed, I learned quickly that oil paint was much better for me to wipe and blend with.

I can remember the day another artist from The Arts Incubator studio in the Crossroads Kansas City introduced me to oil paint for the first time. He put the oil paint on his fingers and wiped it on a wall to show me how deep and rich the colors can be with only a small amount applied.

He gave me a whole tub full of paints to try out, I started using them and was inspired at a whole new level to create new pieces! The artist then left the studio the next week because he was in some kind of trouble with the law and left me dozens of oil paints and a new book on the many glorious paintings of Marc Chagall.