"Curtain Call" is a portrait of my father as he was going through chemotherapy for prostate cancer. I wanted to depict his bravery and humility as he fought the disease that eventually took his life. To me, no matter how much we loved and supported him, it seemed to be a battle that he had to fight on his own, in the quiet hours of the night. Although it is not what he would have wanted to happen, I am eternally proud of him for the way he faced it.
In "Protest", I wanted to explore and express the feeling of wanting to stop the day to day mundane crowd. At the time I was experiencing a great upheaval in my life, and it was odd to me that the rest of the world could simply continue talking about the weather. It is a protest to the apathy that is inevitable.
"Torn" began as a piece about empathy, and I originally tried to depict the struggle of the single mother, but it became afterward more of a self portrait describing the feeling of being pulled in many different directions by life. The combination of the two became an even stronger empathetic image than the original design, and although disturbing to some, to others it can be a very cathartic experience to see a manifestation of their own frustrations.
