Memento Mori is a mixed media piece I completed in 2010. It's one of my more emotional pieces that from thee beginning of it's conception had the theme of death. A lot of the inspiration behind this piece came from a combination of medieval artwork and it's depictions of death and 19th century photography since back then, portraits of recently deceased children were quite common. In this piece, you see a dual portrait of Death holding a deceased baby or a baby that is almost deceased, although one could argue that the reality is that Death is actually the child's saddened mother and the picture frame is actually a regular picture frame rather than what you're seeing. This is up to the viewer to decide.

Memento-Mori in it's earliest form started out as two different drawings with a similar theme. That theme was of course death. After these drawings didn't really go anywhere for a year, I decided that since the basic ideas share a common theme, they should somehow be connected into a single piece. Two canvases were assembled and the two pieces of paper were glued on each canvas. Then the two canvases were stapled together and re-enforced with hot glue. The basic frame of the piece was created using chicken wired which was wrapped in canvas. I then re-enforced the entire structure by filling the hollow inside area with plaster (NOTE: I later learned that I really didn't need to do that. It ended up being a waste of time and by the end of the project, Memento-Mori ended up weighing almost 30 lbs). Since I didn't know exactly what I wanted to draw yet, I used molding paste to create the texture around the frame. It was then painted using mostly bone black acrylic paint. Two colors of metallic paint was spread over the frame area to help make the texture stand out. The two drawings were done mostly with charcoal and pastels which were then sprayed with gloss fixative. Polymer gloss was used on the drawing to create transparent texture which was supposed to resemble glass and it was also used on the frame to add more of a shine.

I will admit, Memento-Mori does not have the best drawing work I've done. I will admit that in the end, it was a little rushed in order to be ready for a show I was having and I would never normally do that, especially for a piece that was in development for nearly 2 years, but I also feel that the drawing isn't bad by any means. Also, I feel I created an art piece that is in a way much more emotional than my usual work and emotional in a way that most people don't have to question. I really set out to create something that was different than anything I had created prior to this piece and I feel like I succeeded. I also learned a lot and gained some technical skill by working on this project. That mistake I mentioned with the plaster won't happen again in the future.