Lil' Monster

Acrylic on Masonite
October 2004
10” x 9.5”‍‍

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‍“All you need is love!”
-The Beatles

In one of my earliest paintings from 1995 there was a masked boogie man playing a drum who haunted me. He turned up in various guises in many paintings that year. I finally decided he was Tom expressing a complicated set of fears in both of us about our journey together. A coyote trickster. Also a magical genie.

This painting was started years ago as a kind of clean-off-the-pallet doodle. The monster was crawling out of the deep like the creepy crawlies in many versions of Tarot Moon cards. Unfinished, the painting lurked in my piles until I decided to work on it. Lo and behold, the monster became a drummer again – but not a scary one at all. It just shows what our fiercest inner boogie men can become when we finally find the courage to look them in the face. To love them in spite of our fears and discover that they only want love from us. He still is kind of a coyote though. And a genie. A magi? Why not.

Written for Living Out Loud Show, Bay City Arts Center, November 2004