This doodle came to me while I was hiking in Joshua Tree National Park earlier this year. An aggressive bee buzzed in my face and around my head. I stepped a few feet away, and it followed me. I jumped back maybe ten more feet, and it followed again, buzzing in my face. So I ran a good thirty feet, and it relented. This happened on three separate occasions, in three different locations, by three different bees! These were the most territorial and aggressive bees I've encountered. Killer bees? Maybe. Fortunately I was not swarmed.
The Deal
This work is not a "painting" in the traditional sense, as it includes sculptural elements such as game-used hockey sticks, goalie cage, and bees sculpted with clay, wire, and epoxy resin. Some of the bees appear to hover a few inches away from the surface, and the surface itself has ridges, indentations, and various forms in an irregular shape. These are some things that might get lost on a computer screen.
Part of my Rise Fall Rise series, this piece continues the theme: the surface includes papers -- legal opinions from California courts (torn from California Reporter) as metaphors for controversies we may encounter in our lives; the hockey sticks and goalie cage are used by a hockey goalie for defense and protection; the playing cards are the deal, perhaps random, perhaps stacked; and the bees represent a society or community and those stings we get, a single one or a potentially fatal swarm. Even when we think we are prepared, the stings can find their way in.
The Deal, 63" x 59", oil, acrylic, game-used hockey sticks and goalie cage, playing cards, clay, epoxy resin, aluminum screen, wire, wood, paper, plastic sheet, canvas, 2015.