Ego Death

My piece titled “Ego Death”, is a 14x17 inch piece made with charcoal and pastels on heavyweight paper. It is an illustration of a man in a grey hoodie that is overlapped by straps of a backpack and he is bleeding from the center of his forehead, as he has suffered from a fatal gunshot wound. There is a fully bloomed blue iris flower that has sprouted from the exposed gunshot wound. The flower is the only thing in this piece that displays such vibrant color, making it the center of attention in such a horrific scene. While there is blood dripping from the man’s forehead, there are also tears running down the man’s face, but his facial expression tells us that these tears did not come from fear of losing is life. His face expression shows tranquility, perhaps freedom and serenity. In front of the man is a hand holding a gun firmly with smoke emitting from the muzzle. The smoke is the next most noticeable figure in the piece as it has taken form of a woman that is leaning forward towards the victim, gazing at him with a sense of sadness and guilt.

This piece is about the experience of death. I’ve never died before so I can’t exactly say what that experience is like as I can only speculate, just like many of you. It is often said that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. I believe this to be true. I think in our last moments we’ll think about the things that are most important to us; thoughts of love, fond memories, pain, suffering and regret. After that I imagine that we must let go of all of those things as we are about to die. And just like that nothing will matter as if it never even happened because you have reached the end of your life. That exact moment is what I call the “Ego Death”. When I die, I think I’ll finally be free. Free from the things that torment me like my fears, my flesh, love, striving for righteousness, my purpose, everything. I don’t mean to speak like everything in the world causes me pain, but these are things I constantly think about to the point I feel like I’m suffering and sometimes I just wish to be free… even if it’s for a moment. I think about love so much that I’m passionate about it, but love makes my heart sore and it would be nice to not have to think about it. It would be nice to let go and just be filled with hope and trust that everything is okay. That is indeed what the blue iris flower represents; faith, hope, and trust. I think this may be my favorite flower. The color blue is associated trust and serenity and by adding this flower to my piece, I’m showing that I have trust in the Lord to take away all of my suffering at the appropriate time.

I’ve noticed that I’m the type of guy to find myself in a situation like this; to end up dying by an individual I know nothing about over someone that I love. This is actually how I thought I was going to die a couple years ago. My ex, who I can’t stop loving even if I tried, was having a small birthday party downtown. She called me hours before her party feeling stressed and scared. She was scared because for one reason or another, someone threatened that they may pull up on her to jump her or perhaps worse. She didn’t have anyone else to call or to invite that could watch over her. Not even her boyfriend at the time as he would rather go to a rave with his friends than to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday. So I told her that I would go and make sure that she stays safe. In the end, nothing happened and she had nothing to worry about. She had a blast and smiled so brightly, which was truly the only thing that mattered to me… her smile. However, after that phone call, I truly thought that I may end up dying that night. I spent the few hours before her party coming to terms with that and thinking about my ex. Looking back at it, it’s honestly kind of funny how dramatic I was and perhaps I’m still just as dramatic. I imagined myself dying because if someone showed up trying to kill her then I have no doubt in my mind that I would’ve kept her safe on way or another, but I’m not fond of guns so I don’t own one, nor am I fond of violence. In a situation like that, I’d probably get really hurt or die.

Love is truly the most beautiful blessing that I have ever experienced, so it’s sad to think that blessing causes me so much pain that I wish to be free of it despite the fact that I hold onto it so tightly, as if love and I are one and the same and only thing that can free me from it is death. It makes me feel like I’m ungrateful of God’s gift and it brings me shame. I know that love isn’t the issue but rather it’s attachment, I just have no way of dealing with the pain that it causes when I lose something precious to me.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what my art is. What makes it mine? I think I am my art, like my work and I are the same. So, in that sense, what am I showing to the world? What am I showing to you, my audience? I think Vincent Van Gogh would describe his work as “Sunlight”, and that he’s showing the world what it’s like to be filled with sunlight/energy. So what am I showing you by making a piece like this? A piece that romanticizes my own death to escape the very thing that I treasure and yearn for. To be specific, my style is essentially the positive energy that’s in color that comes from light and the negative energy that is without color from the lack of light. In other words; color and black and white, good and evil, light and darkness, beauty and horror. Is this the path of artistic autonomy that I wish to go down? I am fascinated with this concept because it’s actually something that I can call mine. It’s my world that I’m sharing with everyone.

Above is an AI generated image of my work. When I finished my piece, I shared it with a few facebook groups just to hear people’s thoughts on it. I received a lot of good feedback from the subject matter and the piece itself. One person took my piece and decided to make this image using AI. The use of AI has been a popular topic in the art community for about a year now, but this is my first experience dealing with it. I think other artists would see this as incredibly disrespectful as this person did not have my permission to take my work and do this. A lot of artists have an issue with AI art due to ethical concerns and copyright issues. AI art is based on the works and styles of others which kind of devalues the original artists’ hard work. This is something I can now understand. However, at the time, I didn’t think about it like that. I just thought about how within an hour of me posting my piece, my life’s work was surpassed. You can clearly see that this is my piece, but to me it was executed even better than what I had produced. That’s what frustrated me… my competitive nature told me that I lost. I did not despise the person for generating this image nor do I despise AI art. I was disheartened by my own shortcomings. I despised myself and was filled with rage and I still am. Why is that? It’s because my goal is to be the best, to become a great artist, and this made it clear how far behind I am from that.

After I took some time to collect my thoughts, I realized there’s no point in getting upset. There are still higher mountains for me to climb so I just have to focus on going up. When I thought about what the greatest artist in the world would do in my situation… I thought to myself, “The greatest artist in the world would never be discouraged.” And that was that. In my mind I’ve always been in competition with the great artists that have come before me as I’ve always studied and learned from them. I’m just a really competitive person and now I’m determined to create something so great that AI art fails in comparison. I don’t care if I fail or if it’s impossible… I won’t back down from a challenge. That is all.