Wasp Idol

86 x 45 cm, acrylic and oil on wood

Wasps. I like them. Not to hang out with, mind you, but the forms of the big ones are majestic, mechanical, often very colorful. One day we will talk about the Jewel Wasp some night when the kids have all gone to bed and we can speak in the tongue of nightmares. For now, let us praise the Yellowjacket: they can be real annoying in the Czech late summers and several of the little shits stung me when I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania. One time I was on the phone with grandma and one flew in and stung me on the nipple. Grandma thought mom had smacked me for screwing up a recital of the Hail Mary, which I was to have memorized.

The first incarnation of The Wasp was done in Tokyo when I was experimenting with wasting oil paint by squeezing it directly out of the tube onto the canvas, or, in this case, onto a folding portfolio I had found in the trash. It sold quickly though - enough for a 4-hour karaoke session - and I thought, "I think I'll paint one like that again after I've settled down somewhere." Then, as now, I was thinking a lot about the iconographies humans dream up and can't seem to live without: the cave drawings, the gold statues, the cut-and-paste mashups of horns and heads and wings, all thrown together in the creation of guardian spirits, world creators, covers of Vogue magazine. And stained glass windows, which I had fun approximating in the wings of my wasp-god.

In Japan you can go to any department store and find a staggering variety of calligraphy brushes and inks on sale. Hell, you can go to a 7-11 and get calligraphy supplies - the kids need them for school. Since I was trying to learn how to read and write in Japanese, I learned quite a bit about how to hold the brush, the order and direction of the strokes, the vast variety of styles one can use to write the same kanji or hiragana. The first Wasp painting I actually used a fude brush and sumi ink for the base black, overlaying it with rough scrapes of oil from the tube. Sumi dries fast, so I wouldn't have to wait to put down thin layers of yellow oil on top for a palimpsest effect - the same effect monks got when they erased old texts to use the (expensive) paper for something new and improved. No Japanese person would say I was very good at Japanese calligraphy, but I like to think some of my self-teaching is evident in the legs of our big friend here.

Wasps are fascinating creatures and I could talk about them all day. But I won't. The problem is always trying to put the awesomeness of a living creature into a static picture. If you've got a dead wasp and a living wasp in front of you, one of them is going to be a hell of a lot more exciting than the other, right? It's the same with gods: you need to make them big, elevate them, put them in a central position, give them six arms and make them blue, have fireworks coming out of their ears. It's the central thesis of any piece of art: "Hey! Look at this! This is worth your attention!"