Mike Vick-Atlanta's Savior

[inevadropit]

Did the photo manipulation myself. Comments?

 

[C-BoysFaninMIA]

it tight, thats al i can say

 

[Dawgs0916]

I think the backround photos should be a LITTLE more noticable, other than that its awesome.

 

[LaTunaNostra]

That is outstanding.

 

[Danny White]

That's really cool. It reminds me of Angel from the X-Men comics... one of my favorite characters when I used to read them as a kid.

 

[Hiero]

quite impressive, now do some for the cowboys! JJ and wing shoes ;D

 

[diehard2294]

The design is cool,I think you could bring some of the opacity back on the backround pick,and some different font. It's still your high quality workmanship,just remember you asked for comments

 

[LaTunaNostra]

I can't stop looking at this one.

It's Greek mythology (part Prometheus, part Icarus), part Dante's Lucifer and part Shelley's. It evokes Yeats' Second Coming to me too.

The pose is Rodin meets Frazetta.. and everything from the curve of his heels to the hang of the head is sculptured....Vick is a beautiful man and that photo captures so much beyond it..tension, litheness, a pensive cat about to spring, eternal weariness and the curse of youth.

The wings could have been a fallen angel's or Pegasus' and worked..but the Falcon wings are appropriate and give the whole mythological feel a native American tint..just a gorgeous production.

In a gallery, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. It's moving and the imagery is everything from Faust to Cat People. Everytime I look at it, some other line of poetry or archival type comes to mind.

 

[diehard2294]

I can't stop looking at this one.

It's Greek mythology (part Prometheus, part Icarus), part Dante's Lucifer and part Shelley's. It evokes Yeats' Second Coming to me too.

The pose is Rodin meets Frazetta.. and everything from the curve of his heels to the hang of the head is sculptured....Vick is a beautiful man and that photo captures so much beyond it..tension, litheness, a pensive cat about to spring, eternal weariness and the curse of youth.

The wings could have been a fallen angel's or Pegasus' and worked..but the Falcon wings are appropriate and give the whole mythological feel a native American tint..just a gorgeous production.

In a gallery, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. It's moving and the imagery is everything from Faust to Cat People. Everytime I look at it, some other line of poetry or archival type comes to mind.

that's pretty heavy LTN

 

[LaTunaNostra]

that's pretty heavy LTN

LOL And now I'm hearing Peter Gabriel's "San Jacinto".

When I saw that photo a while back I saved it too..what amazes me is this kid would put wings on so dejected a figure, and what surprises me more is he'd then name it "saviour".

I sense a true artistic spirit.

Either that or he just likes to fool around.

 

[inevadropit]

LOL And now I'm hearing Peter Gabriel's "San Jacinto".

When I saw that photo a while back I saved it too..what amazes me is this kid would put wings on so dejected a figure, and what surprises me more is he'd then name it "saviour".

I sense a true artistic spirit.

Either that or he just likes to fool around.

While I wish I could say that the actual piece was inspired by greek mythology, I sadly can't say that it was. Someone pitched me the idea of displaying a flying Michael Vick. It was against the Rams where you see that famous flipping player near the endzone. I didn't like the image so I cycled through all the images I had and found this one. It's always been a favorite of mine.

"tension, litheness, a pensive cat about to spring, eternal weariness and the curse of youth."

That's exactly what you find in this picture.

Just looking at the image, you wonder, why is he so dejected and hurt? What is causing the frustration?

That's where the city ties into the image. There are hopes and expectations from every single falcon fan in that city, and when Vick was drafted, those expectations flew through the roof.

Wings in general to me represent hope and faith. It means you believe in something so much you have a passion for it. Connect that with Vick and you have a picture so subtle but so full of emotion.

Now you have the image with the city behind Vick. There's the pressure of being who he is. Then feathers flying away from him. That's the result of the tension and frustration that I've been speaking of. It's best put by the "curse of youth".

The Faded Falcon represents the beast that lives with in. His fire for the game.

Then the faded image of Vick, the only part you can really see at first glance are his eyes. The eyes are the gateway to the soul and they can tell a story in themselves. Being such a neautral picture of him, you can mold the idea you are trying to represent. With the feel of the rest of the image, I felt like you are looking into his eyes and seeing all of those emtions.

Now why he's a savior.

A savior is someone who rescues another from danger or harm. Every other piece I see about a savior is bright and beautiful and only shows one side to what being a savior is. I felt like showing the real life behind being that sort of figure and not just show another typical facade.

I feel I executed my idea perfectly. It's by far the most simple image that I've ever done but that's what makes it special. The story isn't laid out there and told to you. You actually sit there and wonder what my thoughts were behind it. It makes you think.

LTN, you're the first to read into it as much as you did, and I appreciate that so much. You made some beautiful comments about it that I printed it out and tacked it up on my bulletin board where all of my ideas go. It's gonna be inspiration for awhile.

 

[LaTunaNostra]

The flying feathers....those are so ephemeral and delicate...thanks for explaining what you were symbolizing with them..they are indeed evocative of frustration..of something indefinable escaping..lost chances, perhaps, or an understanding of how brief a football career is..and in particular how brief this one may be..condsidering the dangers this player's exceptional gifts put him in.

But they don't connote hopelessness, certainly not despair. It's those lone feathers drifting away that give his whole 'story' perspective. Expected to be a "saviour" or not (and certainly no player in recent memory has so had the fortunes of an entire franchise placed so purposely on his young shoulders) succeed or fail, triumph or wilt....those isolated drifting feathers imply in the end, only the struggle will have mattered.

I rarely read so much into anything, Inevadropit. But art is about interpretation and your creation has so much to consider.

If you ever want the full blown art critic review, do me a TG.

As always, I am shameless. LOL

 

[LaTunaNostra]

PS. Whether your choices..the symbols, the pose, the airiness, the mystique.. were motivated by mythology is debatable.

The late Swiss psychologist Carl Jung claimed there is such a thing as a collective psyche, which store all of humanity's essential images, whether sacred, profane, mundane or sublime. This human visual lexicon is why the same themes recur again and again in art and literature - they are engained in our psyches, and there is a universal connection to them. They transcend culture and time.

You may have conciously decided to draw on the archetypes of salvation and burden, but unconsciously connected them to Sisyphus, whose fate was to roll the same heavy stone up a mountain by day, only to have it roll back down each night, to Prometheus, whose fate for giving humans the gift of fire was to have his liver eternally gnawed at by a winged creature, to Icarus, whose fate was to fly too close to the sun on waxen wings, and to the possibly the greatest literary creation of all time, the fallen archangel who Milton wrote, felt it 'better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven".

Jung would say all these figures reside in and to some extent rule our imaginations. Their existance enriches our lives immeasurably. For Jung, they were the core of both humanity and spirituality.

Football, I have found, is a great metaphorical exercise by which we introduce some of these archetypes to the light of 'reality'. But we don't often make the connection between ancient, even primordial images and our daily lives.

Your art does just that.