A nice story for Sunday Afternoon...

I have been having an ongoing discourse between an artist of mine and his mother. There is nothing like getting stuck in the middle between a 70 year old woman and her 50 year old son.

This artist – I will call him Mark for a lack of a better name, and because I would not want for him to ever come across this blog and be offended that I spoke out of school.

Mark never actually has shown anything at the gallery as he has spent the past year in and out of mental institutions. However his likes to call me on a weekly basis to tell me about what is going on with his medications and just in general tell me any odd thought that happens to be currently wandering through his head.

I was very clear with Mark that I could not store any more of his Art in my very small gallery. I was also very clear that if he was not going to make an attempt to start getting his artwork framed for a show that instead of storing art at the gallery he was going to have to come and pick it up.

Last week his mother who is rather odd herself called and said that Mark told her to take all of his art work off the walls at her house and drop it off at the gallery. I’m like “no Mrs. Marks mom – I do not have room for it.” She is like” well Raspootin you do not understand he keeps calling me and threatening me that if I don’t give you the artwork he will – well I don’t know what he will do but my son is crazy ya know what I mean.” I said Mrs. Marks Mom – do not bring the artwork here. I will refuse it if you do.

So last night around 8:00pm Mark calls me from the psychiatric ward and says that I have to take the artwork because he has had a falling out with his mother. I again said no I do not have room for it. What did he not understand about our last conversation?

He ignored me and said let me tell you about the falling out with my mother. He said I have done a painting that is really cool about it. So I take the bait and say ok tell me about it Mark. What is the painting of? He is like well it is 84 x 60 inch oil on canvas depicting a woman with her breast exposed rocking and nursing her child. However the child has a large knife in its back and blood running out of its partially severed head which is leaning at a grotesque angle poised on the mother’s nipple. He then indicated that even though the chair is in motion, the mother is dead too.

Ok…

He then said that the piece was inspired by a child hood experience. When he was a child he would say: “ Mama rock me more” and she would say that she did not want to and he would say “please mama just five more minutes” and then she would rock him for five more minutes, but he knew that she really did not want to rock him. He the repeated, my mother and I have had a falling out and she will never rock me again.

I just felt the need to share this with everyone… I also went back and started looking at all of Mark’s Woman pieces today. The entire collection of woman pieces has oddly placed nipples and or breasts. The picture above is one that I find particularly disturbing. Evidently I did not really give it a good look when he dropped it off.