Background: Crime and Punishment vs. Real Life

So I had this teacher in grad school. Let’s call him Larry. Well, to put it bluntly, Larry was an asshole to me when I first got there. Not completely unreasonably though, I came late my first year and missed orientation. Not that I skipped it, let’s just say I had a good reason why. So without going into specifics, Larry was an asshole, but he was also an asshole to most “first years,” although not everyone. I think it had to do with the way he was taught. He went to school during the height of abstract expressionism, where I believe that was how everyone taught: you belittle the students, make them think they know nothing, so you can build them back up again how you please.

So my first year was filled with a lot of resentment, and it wasn’t just directed at Larry, it was directed at the other students, who I accused of sharing one big brain in an attempt to make this guy happy, recycling ideas and phrases he threw at us. It was directed at school in general. And it didn’t help I was doing some of the shittiest painting I’ve ever done. It was the first time I ever questioned why I was painting.

Anyway, I was thinking about that event in relation to Crime and Punishment, because to me, the main idea of the book is the psychological effect of a decision one makes. How one decision can end up changing the way you see other people as well as yourself. I wanted to have these paintings come to represent an emotionally intense state of mind, with these dolls, based on the characters in crime and Punishment. Not that I set out to make reference to this personal experience, I just made the connection. In my opinion, this was a very successful body of work, and consider it to be the first time I really took an idea to it’s conclusion, milking it for all it’s worth and getting to the root of the idea. It might even be more accurate to say that I resolved the work. I answered the question “Where the hell did that idea come from?”



“In 49 years there must have been many tens of thousands of pieces of good advice I have been given, but I can recall only these two. The inescapable conclusion: we do not hear advice. We do not want advice. We particularly don't want advice we have not asked for. The only advice we register is when something is said that we already know but need someone else to confirm.”
-Kentridge

“Day after day
They take some brain away
Then turn my face around
To the far side of town
And tell me that it's real
Then ask me how I feel”
-Bowie