As a new experience in painting music, I listened to Sail Into the Abyss (from the album of the same name) by my good friend Russell Eck.
Death metal music is known for “death growls” or a powerful, and often sinister, cross between a shout and a growl voice that would normally damage the vocal chords if not done with skill.
The genre also uses breakneck drum beats and guitar riffs, at times contrasting with lyrical sections, and Russell also uses creative time signature changes. Here’s a link to a website for Russell’s song, Sail Into the Abyss, that inspired this painting.
The Process
I dug out an old failed painting to recreate that had sweet pastel colors, and I didn’t hold back carving with my chisels and woodburning areas. I took out my aggressions visually and felt intense energy from the music!
There is such complexity in the rapid guitar riffs and constant rapid drumming, that my painting is packed with visual information. As Russell, in creating the music, layered in first guitar riffs, then drums and bass, and vocals of death growls and other singing, I layered in colors with a roller, carved and burned away spaces, and painted with a brush over highlights.
Rebellion
Russell’s evolution as an artist brought changes to his next album following Sail Into the Abyss. For SITA, my painting makes sense as somewhat of a landscape, with elements of stability such as repetition, common key, and structure.
However, Russell’s new direction has no repetition and atonal chords. It is untethered and defies logic. It rejects norms. It blazes its own trail. As in SITA, a common theme in Russell’s work is that it is ultimately rebellious.
Even if my artistic response to Sail Into the Abyss isn’t at Russell’s current level of abstraction, my painting rebels against my usual nature because it works with darker emotions and thoughts.
Sail Into the Abyss has forceful lyrics about doing away with a societal “false narrative” of “duplicitous contagion” by “spurious patriarchs” for something new, a kind of beauty.
New Journey
Russell’s lyrics express rejecting what disgusts him, starting a new journey.
As you sail into the abyss reality will slip through your fingers
And I know this is not the path you want to take
But it will all make sense once you’re in the abyss
As we sail into the abyss, say goodbye to everything we have known
The journey begins, breaking the veil of the unexplored
Tear out the sickness, disease, malignancy
Leave behind a hollowed out shell for beauty to take hold and flourish
Filling a once disgusting cavity with ambition and aspirations
As Russell talks of the course of the unexplored, my experience with this painting was also of moving into the unknown, although mine is a nature of exploring emotions rather than rejection of societal ills.
It was an experience of breaking through and rebelling against my own artistic spiritual goals of joyful worship, growth, love and compassion, and gratitude. The failed painting with sweet pastel colors that I started with and reimagined took on decay, anger, despair, malevolence, and misanthropy, until it became a new kind of art, inspired by the music.
Here’s a link to more music inspired art posts on my blog.
Conclusion
I did not expect people’s reactions to what I created out of my own powerful unexplored emotions that Sail Into the Abyss inspired. Some feel it’s pleasant, some are fascinated with the intricacy, and to some, it tells new stories.
To acknowledge antagonistic thoughts and feelings is to acknowledge more of the depth and breadth of being human. When experienced differently, from the artist to the person who experiences it, art is a unique creation.
As each person has a new interpretation, art at times flourishes in the dark.