The What: Standing In Line at the Butcher Shop. (The Prize Fight.)

This piece has two points to start from...and the comparison between those two points reveal the main idea behind the piece.

Standing In Line at the Butcher Shop. (The Prize Fight.)

 48x62
Acrylic, Pastel, Charcoal and Pencil on canvas.

On the left, you have a crowd. Some look forward with glee, some downward in disgust. Some wipe their brow...others shout. Some point forward, calling out their prize...some wait patiently, staring blankly forward. They stand so close their bodies become intertwined, arms reaching through gaps, faces peering over shoulders, shuffling, shifting and inching toward the front..

And on the right you have the prize.  A fallen figure...a grotesque abstraction splayed atop a canvas surface. The animal led to slaughter...a butchered corpse.

Are these people waiting in line for the freshest cut of meat or surging forward following a brutal prize fight? Are they salivating over their next meal or seething over lost bets?

Is it a simple scene of a downtown butcher shop or the wild aftermath of heavyweight match? No matter what your answer, a victim lies in ruin while the crowd surges, thirsty for more.

The piece is not meant to condemn either action, a boxing match or a butcher shop, but more to draw connections between our natural predatory actions and our rabid consumption of violence. Much like the loser of a prize fight, we pay no mind to the body on the butcher's table and continue to look toward the next best thing. No matter how good the last cut was, we'll always be thirsty for more when the next week comes around.