"Home Scream Home", 12x12, oil (framed as shown) Click on the painting for a better view.
Sometimes you just have to paint something ridiculous. I painted the above with the intentions of putting it into an upcoming show with a surreal theme. In the end, I totally forgot to enter it thanks to a hurricane!
My thoughts when painting it were probably focused on injustice in general, with good people losing their homes due to catastrophic problems- illness, rising healthcare costs, job loss, etc. And with our homeless population increasing at an alarming rate in this country, it's as though everything is somehow turned upside down. The things we used to take for granted as Americans, job security, affordable healthcare for all, and home ownership, are now a thing of the past which cannot be depended upon.
I used the iconic figure in Edvard Munch's painting, "
The Scream" to depict an outsider, locked out of his own home during a snowstorm, staring in horror at the fact that a family of wise old owls had taken over his residence.
While birds taking over our homes is certainly not a possibility in our current world, there are currently plenty of catastrophic events occurring on a daily basis to make one wonder how secure our feeble securities truly are. Hurricanes have recently made many thousands of people homeless here in the United States and Caribbean Islands. There have been earthquakes of the magnitude of 7 and 8 in recent days in Mexico, horrific monsoons in Bangladesh, and wildfires through the north eastern quadrant of the US as well as in Portugal. In an unpredictable world, it's easy to throw one's hands up in the air like Chicken Little and scream that "The Sky is Falling Down!"
I recently went through my own scream moment. Holed up in a dark shuttered home during Hurricane Irma with winds howling outside and no way of knowing how it was all going to turn out, this claustrophobic individual that happens to be me just wanted to go to the door, open it up, and scream back in horror at Nature's rant. In the end, I realized it was all out of my control and I was at the mercy of a Higher Power. I had two choices- I could either surrender to terror or to trust. I chose the latter, and retreated into a small room to pray and read Scripture.
There is no doubt that storms will erupt throughout our lives, but storms can also have a silver lining as well. In looking for the silver lining, I realized that my faith has grown stronger as a result of this storm, which will hopefully build upon the next storms in my life.
Sorry if this post offends anyone. I think I just needed to state in writing the things that were going through my head when I painted this silly painting.
If you have any interest in owning a weird painting, please send me an email at maryannejacobsen@aol.com. Thanks for visiting my blog!
This painting won Third Place at the Venice Art Center's "Branchin' Out" exhibit.