I made this piece in 2021 and I definitely have an emotional attachment to it as it was my first piece ever!! I vividly remember driving home from the gym one night and the idea popped in my head and I went straight to Walmart before even getting home to get painting supplies. For context, I was 20 years old, in the military, aka my first ever big girl job, and this piece really reflects how I felt about it. I reached the point where I realized what capitalism is, where a large portion of the population has to work to survive. When an idea pops into my head its meaning is not always fully formed, rather I see the image I need to create then realize it while I’m painting. It tends to be linked to my emotions, however I don’t always have a big emotional connection to all my paintings. This one I did. I came up with the name blinding truth because sometimes when you see something you cannot unsee it. We can see this with how the eyes are gone, a blue/gray color to represent blindness with blood dripping down to express it was a painful realization. However, with this blindness, a third eye was opened. I believe that the suit he wears with the buildings in front captures the “American dream” and the corporate work life. The storm in the background represents chaos. In the art world, a “nice” or pleasant painting has a cool color, like blue, in the background, but this reversal of using red can cause upsetting or disturbing emotions in the viewer. But I still wanted to incorporate blue, I think it's a sign of hope, and also offers some kind of balance to the instability of the painting. The water is also a sign of hope but I still included whitecap waves because by no means is this supposed to be a calm or relaxing painting.