BUTTERFLIES IN BONDAGE
Butterflies in Bondage is a series of drawings I started in the summer of 1990. I began by creating a cardboard construction for my next door neighbor while living in an apartment on 3rd Avenue in San Diego, California. My neighbor Larry wanted me to create something (art) to hang on his bare living room wall.
I had collected several large cardboard shipping boxes which had been used to ship appliances to the complex. I broke them apart to create the sheets used to make the construction. I spray painted them first and then used acrylic paint with brushes to create the images on the wings.
Then, I pierced the left portion of the butterfly wing and inserted a lighting bolt through it as a destructive force on the fragile wing to restrain its activity.
I had been interested in the patterns created by butterfly wings that were not only fragile but durable. Because of the limited space in my apartment I decided to make the small drawings on bristol board drawing paper with prismacolor pencils to record my ideas for the constructions.
The poems I wrote preserved the inspiration for each artwork to be constructed some time in my future. Byzantine Talisman’s purpose was to protect the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier floating around in the Persian Gulf with my friend Neil McMonigle serving in the ships’s operations. Neil shared my lenghty letters with the other sailors on board for morals’ sake. When he returned to Coronado from the Gulf, he said my letters were anxiously awaited by the crew.
Since butterflies are fragile, they represent the human life expression. And when they become unnecssarily captured and are put in bondage by sharp pins onto styrofoam they can no longer fly free among all the beautiful rainbow colors made from sunshine in the air we breathe! They will die and remain forevermore in bondage!
This series of drawings on paper was accompanied by original poetry meant to accompany the initial sketch to secure the meaningful thoughts for future construction of these artworks to be done by Theodora (pictured below).
The initial constructed painting was created from the drawing "Flying Triangle Restrained" and can be seen in the photograph below. It was constructed by Theodora from cardboard cutouts which were first spray painted then joined together. It has details painted on it with a brush and acrylic paint.
This 1990 commissioned piece was SOLD in San Diego, CA in 1990.
Part of the "Butterflies in Bondage" series shown below were constructed from gessoed canvas which was cut out of unstretched canvas, then manipulated into triangular shapes to mimic butterflies.
"Requiem for an Ideal" shown below on display at Joseph David Gallery in downtown San Diego, CA.
"Requiem for an Ideal" is in a Collection.
Oil on Canvas, 1997
SOLD
Similar Freeform Painting can be Commissioned
"Disappointment" construction is seen below.
Plastic fencing material is the background for mounted, attached gessoed and acrylic painted canvas.
"Disappointment" is in a Collection.
Oil on Canvas, 2008
SOLD
Similar Freeform Painting can be Commissioned