Title: Beyond the Pale, pencil on illustration board, 32” x 40”

Its strange what one feels when completing a major drawing like this. You would think it would be a happy time but instead it’s a mixture of relief, regret, satisfaction and disappointment. As in all my work I’ve strived for perfection only to realize once again it’s not going to happen, but as long as I still strive it’s worth it. Yet there is a certain satisfaction with a job well done, what was only a concept a little more than a year ago is now a reality, real flesh and graphite

“Beyond the Pale” is an old expression meaning beyond the boundary, beyond the accepted norm, A pale was a wooden stake placed as a marker indicating a property line. The subject in this piece is a dreamer, a bohemian, left-thinking, artist-type whose views where once a part of our culture and now are discarded along with lava lamps, black lights and bell bottoms. His old, like-minded comrades are now attorneys and bankers who have become of the same money-changing ilk they once all spoke against so many years ago. Yet he stuck to his beliefs, still yearning for “death to the machine” and continuing to desperately claw away from the system he has fought against all these years. Self-portrait? …Maybe.

Thanks for looking

Armin Mersmann