Yesterday, I visited my parents, who came out to Pittsburgh from the Susquehanna Valley, where I was born and raised. With foam sheets, brown paper, and white packing twine, my father had carefully wrapped the three paintings you see below.
There is a fourth painting, which belongs to the first image you see below, but it's not appropriate for all audiences...if you know what I mean. This, folks, is a family-friendly blog. *snort* Well, it is!
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Savannah Schroll Guz, "Wounded" from the Cadaver Series (2002)
acrylic, paper, book pages, turquoise glitter |
Where does this blue-veined nakedness come from you ask? Back in college, I saw a Mexican horror film called
Cronos (1993). I didn't realize it until recently, but it was done by
Guillermo del Toros. (To see a
New Yorker-produced video exploring more of his monsters, click on his name). In
Cronos, once the scarab watch inserts its hidden and scorpion-style brass stinger into the elderly man's body, he begins to change physiologically. He grows perceptibly younger, becomes incredibly pale. His blue veins show beneath his skin. He develops a taste for blood. So, in effect, he becomes a vampire. The vampire part, I'm not so enraptured by, but the physical changes were fascinating to me. I still remember them to this day. And in 2002, this continued to show up in my art.
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Savannah Schroll Guz, "Hangman II (Pierrot)" (2002)
acrylic, paper, black glitter |
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| (detail) "Hangman II (Pierrot)" |
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| (detail) "Hangman II (Pierrot)" |
I was
so excited to see that the background of "Hangman" actually contains a web of gorgeous black glitter, which apparently wasn't part of
the first image of the painting I posted here on the blog. It looks beautiful in ambient light in the evenings...well, the black glitter does. The drooling dude with the orange head covering, well, not so much.
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Savannah Schroll Guz, "Hangman"
from the Cadaver Series (2002)
acrylic, paper, black glitter |
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