"The F-Bomb Week"

"The F-Bomb Week", Acrylics on Canvas, polyurethane, 16*20, Janelle Jensen Fritz

Note: In this post I'm not attempting to play politically (although art is sometimes just that), instead my aim was to capture and project the historical events in the U.S. during the week of April 15th-20th, 2013 through the painting medium. If you are highly sensitive to the actual usage of the f-bomb, then I advise you not click on the adjoining link (F-Bomb), even if it does give an exhaustive chronological assessment of the weeks horrors. 

When a string of unrelated tragedy's occur it's never a great sign. When sequential bombs, blood, and floods just pile higher and deeper as the week rolls out, we approximate 'blue ruin' proportions. The good news is that when you add the colors red (indicative of love), and yellow (representative of Light, loyalty, and energy) you restore a balance that can build up from the ruins. The hope is reconstituting the future to contain the primary elements of joy, peace, and prosperity. 

In the painting "The F-Bomb Week", the viewer confronts two sides of a brownstone building (classical Bostonian architecture.). The left window of the painting depicts the caged in darkness that exists in this world, which often erupts in an explosion of insolvency.  In the right window the force of Light exudes concentrically, thus illuminating and generating connotations of love, life, and liberty. I conjoined the primary colors in the window of Light in a symbolic representation of one of our favorite All-American pleasures...ice-cream. Specifically a personal nostalgic favorite, "Superman Ice-cream", which is red, yellow, & blue. Ice-cream symbolically depicts many facets of the "good", & the prosperous in life. Despite the many explosive and destructive events of the F-Bomb Week, we saw many rise to "Superman" heights in order to rally for righteousness. 

We can continue the pursuit to "get back to the basics" and rebuild. Just as the primary colors signify love, hope, and peace. We can each hone in on our individual circles of influence and extend attributes and attitudes to perpetuate each of these daily basics. Consistent explosions of "light" are often less dramatic than bombs, but the influence is often more substantial.

"The F-Bomb Week" close-up. Superman Ice-cream.

"The F-Bomb Week", Janelle Jensen Fritz, Acrylics on Canvas glazed with polyurethane

ARTIST NOTE: This work was an exercise in the practice of blending together concepts of street art/graffiti art, and comic book illustrative styles, in a traditional paint-on-canvas method. Extensive layers were compiled, including intermittent sanding, weathering, and scraping to expose underlying paint layers. Several layers of polyurethane were applied over-top the acrylic layers in order to give the 'windows' a glassy appearance.