... Help me name title this painting ...

If I use your title I'll send you a free signed 17" X 21" print of this painting, (or any other painting or drawing in the museum) as thanks.

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Sometimes I have difficulty putting titles on my paintings because I'm too personally involved with them. At times, the title for a drawing or painting is obvious to me from the beginning. However, other times an appropriate title escapes me. Months or years later, after my involvement in the image dissipates, I finally see what the hell I'm looking at, and am able to come up with the title. Lots of times people who see the work title it for me by making a remark. For instance, I did not come up with "VOMITUS MAXIMUS". That name was taken from a woman friend of mine years ago. She looked at one of my paintings, (this one), and said, "EUOW! THAT'S VOMITUS TO THE MAXIMUS MAN!"

Even though I know what this painting is about, I just can't come up with a Title. Any ideas you have are appreciated ...

Contest concluded 6/8/2001

=== This is what this painting is about ===

The clown is me. I'm in this place in my head where I like to go for an alternative to the 'real' world**.

I sit alone in the dark late at night when I can be secure that I will not be disturbed or distracted. I sit in the darkness with only the illuminations of a few small ambient light sources. I used to light candles, but I don't use candles anymore ... (here's why). I surround myself with my drawings and paintings and my collection of dead animals, skulls, fetish objects and masks ... and I drink alcohol ... and I take psychedelic drugs. I do this and I begin to see and hear things. I leave the 'real' world and begin seeing and conversing with apparitions. At times I have sunk through the floor into a place where I speak to the dead. Other times I rise up into a black secret stratosphere where everything is intensely black, Blacker than any Black seen by human eyes. Only reflections of some far away dim light exist to show forms and features. In this black place high up, I become like a spirit myself looking down at the world with some supernatural secret understanding. In this place the wind whispers ancient languages to me ... Most of these memories leave me when I return. However, I bring some of it back. I think these are places beyond death. Perhaps I have crossed over into a place of the dead? Perhaps I go to a netherworld between life and death? ... perhaps it is where I will be when I am dead? I am fascinated and curious beyond words. I return to these places whenever I can. When I am there, there can be no doubt of the existence of God or the Devil. There is no doubt of an infinite number of beings, in an infinite number of dimensions. There is no questions of faith in the other world. But here, in this world, I doubt and question everything.

Which place is more real? What is more real to a madman, the invention of his madness, or the rubber room of his existence on Earth? If you were in a dreaming coma for 50 years, what world would be more real, the life you live in your comatose dreams, or the bed you lay in while your body slips away from disuse?

I have tried to take others there with me but that does not work. If they see where I am they become afraid. If they see who I'm communication with they become afraid. If they don't see anything they are afraid of me, because I'm no longer who I was, and become as unpredictable as a stranger.

OK ... I know what most of you are thinking. He's a crazy drunk geezer who gets so loaded that he thinks he's in some other fucking dimension. Well, yea. That's probably right ... I'm an alcoholic and a drug user***. I believe that these places exist because I go there ... in my mind. So ... Who knows? Who cares? I'm aware that I'm dieing. No, I have not been diagnosed with some life threatening ailment. But believe me, we are all much closer to death than we think. I am obsessed with death ... I think of death and dieing every day. I know that the sands in my hour glass are going to run out and there's NO guarantee that I'm not going to blink out like a TV set and become oblivion. That's why I hate fucking around doing all this crap I don't want to do just so I can not become homeless. I resent doing ANYTHING I don't want to do! (** I hate the everyday 'real' world. I hate it because most of my time is used up in the mundane efforts of seeking food and shelter. All I really want to do is spend time in my head, externalizing the images that I see when I'm there through my drawings and paintings.) There's not a fucking thing I can do about it though, so I do what I must the best that I can, and take whatever time I can to create art and visit the death dimension in my head ... I don't give a fuck.

(*** What I'm telling you is NOT advise for anybody, unless perhaps the advise is to NOT do what I do ...That's fucking lame and hypocritical I suppose, but there's a dear price to be paid for the places I like to send my consciousness. I do not go there with impunity. I have fallen to terrible places using drugs ... and it is no small miracle that I'm alive to write these words. Who knows how much fuller my life could have been? It's what I am ... You are not me, and you don't want to emulate me.)