AJ Masthay invites us to join him on his stoop this Wednesday!
Per AJ: I humbly present my latest work “Dinosaurs in my Backyard”. To quote myself from a previous post, "Just a Suburban White-boy Rasta figuring out life on his parent steps. Meanwhile I’ve got these fuckin' dinosaurs in my backyard."
This image is yet another mashup of life experiences I had growing up in suburban Connecticut. I was that stereotypical white boy with dreadlocks back in the 90’s, granted I was a little ahead of the curve but still. Living in my parents house fresh out of art school, I would often sit on the front steps smoking cigarettes (or whatever) while trying to figure out wtf I'm going to do with my life, you know real existential crisis type stuff. Often I'd look up in the sky and see the constellation of Orion, so much so that I came to call him my smoking buddy. That’s story number one.
Believe it or not the dinosaurs were a real thing, this is story number two.
As a very young child we would make family outings to the local mall called the Meriden Square. On the way there there was this one house, nothing special at all, a typical raised ranch type home. However, in the backyard of this raised ranch was something absolutely enthralling to a young AJ. As you drove by this house you could catch a quick glimpse of its backyard, and in this backyard stood three gigantic dinosaur statues. They were huge, or at least seemed huge to me at the time, and filled me with awe and wonder. Highly stylized, even as a child I knew they weren’t supposed to be real, I knew someone made them. I’d think to myself who the hell made these things and why? Now looking back so many years later, I believe these are some of the first works of art that I connected with. I never did find out who the artist was but these statues made an immense impression on me and were always in the back of my head as I worked through many day jobs and occupations that I knew weren’t fulfilling my creative needs. I’d remember there was some crazy bastard out there that made dinosaurs in their backyard just because they had to, they needed to, likely for no-one but themselves, but indirectly touched me.
Those dinosaurs encouraged me for decades to never give up on my own artistic path. I hope by sharing this you too can be encouraged to follow your own path, whatever it may be.
AJ's print will be available on Wednesday (1/8) @ 12PM ET on our homepage, Bottleneckgallery.com!
Dinosaurs in my Backyard by AJ Masthay
Linocut
16 x 10.5 inches
Signed, titled and hand-numbered edition of 150
$100
Dinosaurs in my Backyard - Watercolor Variant by AJ Masthay
Linocut
16 x 10.5 inches
Signed, titled and hand-numbered edition of 1
$450
Dinosaurs in my Backyard - Graphite OG by AJ Masthay
Graphite on Stonehenge paper
16 x 10.5 inches
Signed
$800