The unsettling suburban neighborhood depicted in David Bailin's Slippage may stir a sense of elusive recognition.
Trees tilt as one glows with yellow light, the sky is charged and furious vortexes surround a man's upper body. Is it confusion? Stress? Or is he drowning in some sort of psychic or cultural debris?
"It's west Little Rock," Bailin says of the work's setting. "Things are familiar, yet skewed. This fellow is falling, he's waking up to something, it's a disconnect."
Slippage is the final image in Bailin's "Dreams and Disasters" series and the Grand Award winner at this year's Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center.
"It comes from an experience I have ... I do sketches and fall asleep, wake up and continue drawing. In the waking up, there is a disjointedness between the dream state and the real world. That's the feeling I wanted to get in this piece."
Slippage wasn't easy to complete; there were several versions.
"The harshness of the strokes in the work are intended to convey agitation," he says. "It reflects a threatening quality about society in general. In suburban neighborhoods you know -- but don't know-- the people who live there."
The work also conveys a sort of irony: People who fled a city they perceived as hellish for the heaven of the suburbs discover their place of refuge isn't as heavenly as they thought. That frustration erupts in Slippage.
"There is a lot of agitation in the piece," Bailin says.
Style on 07/20/2014