what I was trying to get out,
had been conveyed entirely,
just like that. I really just fell
in love with it, I can’t describe
it in any other way, it was like
the completion of a conceptual circle. So there was a pain
involved, but something beautiful was created, it was like
birth in a sense. It’s like physical birth, something is sacrificed, but something is born.
These are human figures that
I’m rendering, and illustrations
or scenarios depicting various
stations of the human experience and I’m using human
blood, reconstituted on these
surfaces to depict that, so it
was kind of like a mind blowing connection that I felt, and
that was it, I just started doing
it, it was kind of like a calling
at the time.
So you literally just got the
idea one day and decided
you wanted to do it again?
Yup, like I said, it started with
small amounts, and when I
decided I wanted to go larger,
and just forget the paint and
use blood exclusively, then I needed more of it, and I needed to start collecting it in a
different way. Initially I was getting it out of my finger tips using diabetic lances, I thought
that was the easier softer way. Then as the requirement for the blood increased and the
canvases got bigger, I started collecting it intravenously, the way you would give blood
for a blood test.
Do you have a phlebotomist license?
I don’t, I’m familiar with human anatomy, and where veins are; it’s really not rocket science.
I heard that once you took too much of your own blood and your lung collapsed.
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