The Just the Wrong Amount of Right...

I started a drawing again a few days ago. My fingers were itching and I had that unsettled feeling that I get when something just wants to come out. And drawing is such a physical art act for me; way more so than collage and much chunkier than sewing. (Fabric work is tactile in a much more silky kind of way.)
Anyway, I began to mess around with pencils and a bit of added collage and then I glued on- and ripped off- other papers, leaving scabby, redrawn-on ghosts. I stenciled letters and then erased them. In short, I had a ball. Then it occurred to me that there was a odd skull shape looking up at me, which, if you think of it, is not all that strange as I must have made thirty plus skulls in the past few years. (They were made from all kinds of crumpled magazines and packing tape).
Above is the third drawing in this series, because inevitably, all my work is from a series, whether new or old. Oh, and the phrase... that's from this weird series of ads for a hotel chain. I think they're trying to appeal to a younger, hipper sensibility. But boy, is a chunk of jargon like that up my alley. Just what are they- and I by extension- trying to say?
And of course, this exercise got me mulling over the twisted way that things like skulls permeate our culture. Not really a source of revulsion and fear or a blunt reminder of our certain mortality, skulls have gone the way of owls, mushrooms, dinosaurs, zombies and many other kitsch-ified societal shorthands. Think about it: dinosaurs were known for tromping around the planet, chewing up smaller dinosaurs and consuming entire palm trees and generally wrecking havoc on a magnificent scale. Not cute, by any means! Even owls are predators, devouring voles and shrews in a single swallow and regurgitating bones and beaks after the fact. And mushrooms are frequently poisonous but they have long been used as decorative devices with fairies sleeping beneath their deathly gills. They have all been rendered safe, cozy and cute. So I can't figure out which side (or hopefully both! I love ambiguity!) my skulls come down on.
On the other hand- embracing that ambiguity- I can honestly say my sorta skull drawing isn't an ultra representational skull . It's more of an implied skull or a suggestion of skull. That leaves room for you to see something entirely different. Or, to see just the right amount of wrong.