MY WORK IN CONTEXT.
Through KatScratch, I find myself confronting my own cognitive discourse – being fearful of the physical and emotional aspects of sexuality, yet at the same time intrigued and fascinated by it. The anger and sadness I feel sometimes from past traumatic experiences, I am able to process it safely through my art. Often 'anger' is seen as a negative emotion, but I see it as a powerful asset, that gives my work fire - as with any tool, it's all about how you use it.
As mentioned in my Statement, the catalyst for my artistic expression, and therefore the biggest driving force behind my work is the film 'The Violent Kind' (2010) written and directed by Mitchell Altieri & Phil Flores AKA The Butcher Brothers, and starring one of my favourite actors, Mackenzie Firgens .
The gist of the plot is as follows:
"One night at a secluded farmhouse deep in the Northern California woods, a small group of hardened young bikers and their girlfriends are tormented when one of the girls becomes savagely possessed and a gang of "Rockabillies" seemingly from the 1950's descends upon them to collect what is growing inside her." http://www.imdb.com
It was the Rockabilly gang that captured me the most, and for me was the most exciting aspect of the story. Their backstory was that they were a group of youths that went missing in the 50's - just vanishing, seemingly never to be seen again. Murderball, Jazz, Vernon, Trixie & Pussywagon.
Looking into what may have been part of the inspiration behind the story, I began reading up on the'ice files' of the 50's - named as such, because due to the comparatively primitive forensic technology at the time, many cases of people going missing were left unsolved, and as trails ran cold, these cases were dubbed 'ice files', and abandoned.
I used the Rockabillies' backstory as inspiration for a piece called 'Missing' - featuring the characters Trixie & Pussywagon:
Another aspect of the Rockabilly Gang that I loved were the heavily stylised costumes in a way they were stylised almost to the point of being caricatures which fitted perfectly with the campy, almost pantomime-like characters. The violence in the Rockabilly scenes was heightened with sexuality to the point where the line between violence and sex became increasingly blurred. The fact that the Rockabillies were impervious to physical harm - much like in a cartoon - meant that violence was all part of 'the game' for them - to the distress of their human victims.
Another important element in The Violent Kind was the soundtrack. In the Rockabilly scene the gang play 50's rock n' roll on a vintage record player - which contributes to the atmosphere of the scene. With the look of the character Jazz reminding me of The Big Bopper:
I then went out and bought my own record player and now have a rather extensive record collection including many of the singles featured in the film.
Music is an integral part of my practice - as I'm working I listen to music that brings about the same emotions in me as I'm trying to convey in the piece. I feel like a conduit, as I channel the feelings provoked by the artist through my pencil and onto the paper.
Most often, I find myself listening to my Buddy Holly and Elvis records - but really it depends on the piece!
The important role of music in the film, to represent the era the Rockabillies came from, inspired my assessment piece "The Void: Between 1955 and 2009"
In The Violent Kind, there are frequent references made to the film Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean. Below are three pieces I did, featuring the characters Murderball as James Dean, and Trixie as a feral Natalie Wood:
The 50's were a time of youth rebellion in the US, echoes of which that would be seen later in the 70's and 80's during the punk era. Against the backdrop of social, political and economic changes, what it meant to be a teenager and youth culture itself underwent a dramatic shift.
The debut of rock n' roll essentially reinvented adolescence, for the first time teens were being exposed to sex and drugs through popular culture. This created a wave of fear and mistrust between the older generations and the young - with many fearing this would lead to society's moral decay.
This new sense of alienation and youthful disenfranchisement gave birth to a slew of films such as 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955), and 'High School Confidential!' (1958).
The 1950's also brought forth a surge of sci-fi films.
Films such as Tarantula (1954) and Them!(1955), were in fact thinly disguised propaganda, as a vicious wave of anti-communism swept through the Hollywood industry and the US population at large - a movement later to be dubbed McCarthyism , due to the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
​
A resurgence of the 50's paranoia emerged in the form of the 'video nasties' censorship campaign. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War. One of the first of these 'exploitation' films was 'Last House On The Left' (1972) by Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham. The outrage of the confrontational violence shown in the film caused such an extreme reaction, that the tagline became To avoid fainting, keep repeating: "It's only a movie, only a movie, only a movie...". Some were so angered and disgusted at the violence in the movie, they made the somewhat ironic threat to bomb cinemas that showed the film.
Not since the 50's had there been such a zeitgeist of fear about the ability of popular culture to lead the youth into moral depravity. The incensed masses failed to make the connection with the surge of films depicting fictional violence, with all to real scenes of horror in the Vietnam War that had inspired Last House On The Left to begin with.
Another artist whose work has been almost exclusively inspired by cinema is Marie Harnett . Her work consists of small, photorealistic pencil-drawings of film stills. Images that as fleeting moments within a film, seem inconsequential, but out of the wider context of the film become stand-alone pieces.
A pencil/charcoal drawing I did, of a still from a film called 'The Innocents' (1961) based on
'The Turn Of The Screw' by Henry James.
