Pagliacci's Emotional Circus

For this commission, my friend and client wished to realize a tattoo he has of the clown Pagliacci, who is the sad clown that dances and laughs despite his tearful nature. In the background are dark horses jumping through flaming circus hoops. This piece helped to revolutionize the importance of backgrounds in artwork for me.

The background began with a feeling that something was necessary besides the portrait itself. I wanted to add some pattern or movement that didn't take away from the piece, but gave it more depth. I was toying with the idea that the brain tends to fill a repeating pattern, even when it's not exact, and makes it seem more cohesive just because the pattern is repeating. The horses were freehanded instead of using a stencil. The reason for this was because the horses, depending on the viewer's preference, can be seen as either an individual horse coursing through time or can be seen as a herd of horses jumping simultaneously from one hoop to the next. The flaming hoops could simply be hoops, or they could be portals. Some of the horse's heads seem to be more in focus than the rest of their body -- this could be due to the smoke emitting from the hoops, or could be because the horses are emerging from another reality. If you choose to view the background as being one individual horse, that view would reiterate that time itself pushes us through portals into "new realities" all the time, constantly. There are always new hoops to jump through, new obstacles to overcome. The fact that they are horses also adds another element of fear and courage, as their hair could easily catch fire while they jump, as well as the nature of horses as spooking easily at anything. There's also a pace that needs to be met for the horses to jump through their hoops successfully -- if they go too quickly, they could easily set themselves aflame -- if they go too slow, they fall into the fire. If you choose to view the horses as a herd, it makes it that much more of a ravaged, but conquered, landscape, because even though they are all doing the same action, it makes it seem all the more insurmountable and terrifying because if one horse spooked and tried to run, or if one balked in front of their hoop before jumping, or one set itself on fire, the rest of the herd would in turn do the same like a set of dominos. In that regard, each horse has intention and a purpose in and of itself, regardless of the precision of its form. It's the act of getting through that matters most.

The Suit of Cousins project that I completed also influenced this piece in terms of the viewing vantage point, as the horses turn upside down halfway/diagonally through the piece. Depending on how you view it, the horses could be falling into hell, or coming upon a different herd like a chess board. In any case, for all the dedication of their already difficult task of jumping through their hoops, they're inevitably going to run into each other anyway -- so there's a pointlessness to the whole affair -- but they go on despite this, not seeming to take note of it.

There's a pointlessness to the circus -- to the risk-taking acts -- to the sad clown that laughs in the face of this -- to the show, the costume, the conveyance of a new world to the audience. But circuses, and entertainment, are meant to release us from the drudgery of jumping through our own hoops of different sorts in our daily lives. Entertainment by nature is frivolous, perhaps unnecessary, but becomes necessary for our brains to find solace and rest and comfort and laughter. You can think of, also, the coliseum and how many people fought to the death just so the citizenry could be entertained and placated. If risk is inherent in an action, it makes the conquering of that action that much more important and meaningful, to the individual performing the action as well as the audience watching. But for the horses themselves, they don't have time to feel relief from the conquered action because they have to use that adrenaline to constantly keep going and overcoming the next hurdle. And that part of it also holds the inevitability of having to stop a some point, since motion does not last forever. In a way, maybe that's what the upside-down horses show, that no matter the suffering these horses endure to get through these hoops, it's going to all end in chaos anyway.