The First Painting: After the Critique

    In a critique of my studies for the project, the point was brought up that clowns, and specifically the idea of "sad clowns", is/are a cliche subject in art. While this criticism is definitely valuable and should be considered when choosing my subjects, it is the clown that I am interested in, not general people in their daily lives. I feel that there is a lot of symbolism that can be assumed about people in general from the image of a clown character as a metaphor, but I personally am more interested in the literal clown and that life style. I'm not some random person who just wants to paint clowns because I think they're cool, I am interested in the subject because of my own personal experience with it. I have a lot of friends who are clowns, and I had a pretty weird experience traveling with a group of circus performers as a musician, and I saw a lot of things that I would have never guessed happened in a circus. My goal is to try to set up some dialogue visually that addresses the sort of devotion and level of obsession among these transient performers. They're all freaks, the lot of 'em, and they're wonderful!

    Anyway, I wanted to get away from the typical sad clown, or even the awesome Edward Hopper clown in a restaurant, where the clowns are in an environment outside of the circus:

Painting by Edward Hopper:

Other TYPICAL "Sad Clown"Paintings

(sad because he can't tell what his real eyebrows are like)

(sad because he pissed himself and he's gonna die alone)

(sad because he is forever immortalized in a shitty sad clown painting... with a dog...)

    On the contrary - I want to show the clown in a circus environment, but not just somewhere being sad and self-loathing, and anywhere near the circus tent - I want to show the hectic circus-like environment that is the life of the traveling performer, and how their character as a performer can be their entire persona. I was thinking about how I could do this, and I decided to pull directly from scenes I remember from my time in circuses, and in traveling with them:

Scenes inside the giant purple circus bus, scenes at gas stations juggling and doing tricks for truckers in exchange for free gas off their company tab, scenes on median strips camping out in sleeping bags between two lanes of traffic, cooking breakfast outside the bus in parking lots, practicing in isolated parks...

Here's some photos I do have, and can use as references:

rigging up the trapeze to the bus for outdoor parade- Portland, OR

running errands on stilts - Portland, OR

Outdoor festival/parade - Portland OR

busking for diesel/gas; large trucker stands on our Eeyore the giant on bed of nails - Olympia, WA

busking near Pike Place Market - Seattle, WA

practicing - Portland, OR

Inside the bus, on the road:

...