A Desperate Lunacy

"To God?-- He loves thee not;--

The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite,

Wherein is fixed the love of Belzebub:

To him I'll build an altar and a church,

And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes."

From Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

I was searching for sources related to this play when I came across the phrase "a desperate lunacy," used to describe Faustus in his sort of frenzy to gain power. The quote above is Faustus speaking to himself, in what I see as a self-convincing argument that says pretty much anything is worth sacrificing in the face of self-indulgement. Faustus' willingness to give an offering of blood from new-born babes is [besides extremely disturbing] actually very indicative of humanity's inherent powerlessness against their Energy, their lack of self-control. Here, he strikes me as a junkie, in withdrawal from power rather than drugs-- in serving his own appetite he's willing to do anything, no matter how disgusting, to see that he gets what he wants/thinks that he needs.

I had a guest critiquer tell me that he though this painting was about reproduction or sexuality. I can see where it might allude to things like that, especially with the symbols merging together and the bloody babies on the right, though it's not the direction I had in mind. This painting was actually very pivotal for me as an artist; I completely uninhibited myself in terms of everything I tend to want to control; imagery, color, composition. I just did what I thought would feel right. Born of this painting is the negative, or "anti" power symbol, which has become extremely important to me in my lexicon of images. It's not, as the critiquer would suggest, a sexual counterpart, but rather a distortion of what's good, obvious or right. It's an image that represents corruption, a metaphor for bad decisions and lurking evil.

It's strange that I wasn't exactly aware of what I was doing when I painted this. I started with the quote but that's really all I had to go on... I tend to paint first, find meaning after, which makes me feel like I'm always trying to bullshit my way through my work, but I don't truly believe that. I think to some degree, my subconscious knows what I'm doing better than I do. I just can't figure out why, or why I'm letting it happen, or whether it might make my art less meaningful if I'm letting it have too much control over me instead of the other way around.