Roger and The Recovery - 2022

Roger and The Recovery (36x48, mixed media and epoxy resin on wood panel) is an exploration of the healing, hope and anticipation of a new love. The iconography I chose for this work; skulls, sunflowers, nude figures, bold bright colors and deep black provide a space to develop a narrative to process and understand my experience. Immersion in a project allowed me to focus my energy and provided a space to process and work through the complexities surrounding the end of a relationship.

The skull, henceforth referred to as Roger, is all black to symbolize Death, but not a mortal corporeal death. In this work, as in many of my works, Death is allegorical for the transitory space between the ending of one phase and the beginning of another. The eyes of Roger are stark white and wide to symbolize an openness to change and acceptance of the unknown.

The 10 figures repeated beneath and around Roger are of Debra Jo Fondren from her September 1977 Playmate of the Month pictorial, photographed by Robert Scott Hooper. Fondren was the first nude figure I saw in a stack of vintage Playboys in the back of a closet at my grandparent’s house when I was a young boy. In this piece Fondren symbolizes the potential of a new start and the home-like comfort in another, hence being surrounded by sunflowers. In all my work sunflowers represent home, safety or comfort.

Roger passes through the composition on a bleeding gesture of black. In my work black is a dichotomous symbol: the absence of light (the unknown) or the presence of all colors (sum of experience). As Roger engages with the figures they receive gold, then color, which represents the experience of knowing someone in life. The colors change Fondren’s features into representations of lovers, henceforth referred to as The Recovery Lovers.

Brandon Joseph Baker 11/30/2022