I enjoyed spending an afternoon with Sean Sobczak, the light sculptor and my old friend. He’s posed for me several times now, twice as Christ, as a member of the crowd at the crucifixion and now as a swordsman and the devil. I’m working on the tarot series with him, and placed him high up on a table on top of a platform so that I could get some light below him, then we rigged a second small light on a stick in substitution of a flaming torch. It turned out pretty well. With the addition of a reference shot of some deer horns borrowed from my friend Terry, who collects them from his wanderings in the mountains over the San Fernando valley, I’m in good shape. I will still need to take pictures of the two slaves who have sacrificed their freedom to stand at the feet of the hermaphrodite devil, and I want to do some photoshop work to turn Sean into a hermaphrodite before getting started on the actual painting.
(Better the devil you know than the one you don’t…)
The other shots of Sean as swordsman are for an idea that I like for the Angels and Devils paintings. I will have him on the left side of the canvas pulling a sword while a woman emerges from light on the right side. I’m interested in the identity of good and evil – is he the good guy or the bad guy? Is he guardian or assailant? I like the ambiguity.
