My Brothers Suicide
2024, oil on linen, diptych 2 @ 68 x 38’

‘Pignatta’ – Italian for ‘fragile pot’ – was a game played with a clay pot by Roman soldiers, a precursor to our modern pinatas. My Pinata paintings explore our lives as fragile pots – filled by experience; worn, altered, and ultimately taken by time. I use pinatas in my work to emphasize the tenuous and fragile nature of our existence. At the age of ten I started to suffer serious OCD obsessive compulsive disorder, brought on by anxiety and abuse. Art was my way to escape and literally my way to survive.

My brother Russell had full lips, and a mouth oversized for his face like Mick Jagger. I taught him to sing Mother’s Little Helper. Russell had a history of mental instability and difficulty controlling his emotions, sometimes screaming contorted on the floor because he could not contain himself, so I was surprised when my stepfather bought him a gun for his twelfth birthday. Later, when my brother was a convicted felon and no longer allowed to possess firearms, my stepfather wondered ‘where this gun thing came from?’ My stepfather was convinced that evil government forces were going to take over, which is why we had guns, gold and canned goods stored around the house. Today it is easy to get anything over the internet. If you are smart, like my brother was, it is even easy to build your own guns from parts purchased online.

Suicide often runs in families. My mother attempted it and was locked up against her will, both in my early childhood and later in life. My brother’s end came when he shot himself in the mouth in 2018.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis please call the suicide and crisis hotline at 988.