Medusa Heap

Here is my Medusa Heap- a culmination of a year and a half of layering, sanding down, painting over and building back up of tangled flesh and garbage. The composition is superficially based on Gericault's Raft of Medusa.


Medusa Heap
acrylic on wood
36" x 49"
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Details:






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This painting was originally inspired by the Killdozer- a heavily fortified bulldozer that Marvin Heemeyer, a disgruntled muffler shop owner, built in order to demolish the town hall of Granby, Colorodo.

From Wikipedia:



The piece of construction equipment used in the incident was a Komatsu D335A bulldozer fitted with makeshift armor plating covering the cabin, engine and parts of the tracks. In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor. This made the machine impervious to small arms fire and resistant to explosives; three external explosions and over 200 rounds of firearm ammunition fired at the bulldozer had no effect on it. National Guard units were placed on standby orders under Governor Bill Owens, as the deployment order has to be made directly from the Governor due to requirement of Posse Comitatus Act.

For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with three video cameras linked to monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard. Onboard fans and an air conditioner were used to keep Heemeyer cool while driving and compressed air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. Food, water and life support were present in the almost airtight cabin. Heemeyer had no intention of ever leaving the cabin once he entered; the hatch was permanently sealed.



I was obsessed with the Killdozer picture above- it represented a lifetime of frustration culminating in a grand gesture of destruction but also of essential failure. The photo itself is a sad little thing...the Killdozer seemingly immobile and dead, a ramshackle pile of concrete and steel. I originally wanted to convey this and I think I was successfull, but as I worked into the piece more, I found the limitations of the rudimentary composition very aggravating. So, like the Killdozer, I did my own destruction and the piece ended up as a heap of tangled shit pushed up against a tree and forgotten, just as Marvin Heemeyer became after he shot himself in the Killdozer cabin after his fantastic rampage.