Bang

I was pretty stunned the other night when my mom told me she didn’t really enjoy Tate Modern.

How can anyone not love modern art?
Ok, I see her point.

She said it made her feel uncomfortable and she didn’t know why people would want to make art about things like that. She said, “you know what really upset me, those paintings that you said were surreal and they were like nightnmares.”

And I said, ‘Yeah, but, Mom, isn’t it so amazing that art can just make you feel. That even though you don’t think it’s a good piece of work, you don’t like it, but it causes you to react in some way, don’t you think that’s powerful?”

“Not really.” She said. “Like I was wondering about the painting in your living room. Why do you have a painting of guns in there? I don’t get it. I said to myself, why the heck did she paint this?”

I think that’s a good question.

I explained how I wanted to represent the iconic nature of the gun, masculine, violence, power... and contrast it with associations to color, yellow = cowardice, pink = feminine, playfulness... She thought that was very intelligent.

But why would my 8 foot painting of guns bother her? Someone who has three different kinds of rifles in her closet?