BasselsJ

Graphite and charcoal studies, 2017 to 2020, drawn from photographs. I saw a passive fighting merit in the musicians at my sister's gigs, then went looking for the same thing in players I had never met.

My sister is a jazz musician. Watching her play, I could hear where she had gone and knew I could not follow her there. These paintings are about what it costs a person to get that far, made in a printing ink meant for cheap reproductions.

The finished ink paintings, and the years I could not explain what I was doing. Frustration became depression, I stopped painting, and I began burning the work to be rid of an idea that seemed pointless beside the status quo.

I was teaching children to fight and rewarding them for it, and I could not answer why. These sketches come from the years I spent asking what the medium of martial arts is, and finding that the answer was fighting itself.

The Wisdom Kings stand at the temple gate, one with his mouth open purging destructive energy, the other with his mouth closed keeping it out. Painting them between 2009 and 2016 is where I learned what that gate costs the person who guards it.