My Pen Doesn’t Work - Art

My Pen Doesn’t Work is a tongue-in-cheek, humorous piece with exciting, erratic lines and shapes. The painting’s title suggests a clever joke – namely, that the artist has run out of ink in creating this piece. The result of the lack of ink is shown by the lack of work on one side of the painting. While one side of the canvas is quite full of lines, their wavy movement reflecting energy and excitement, the other side has only a few spare lines. This humorous play on typical painting methodology is a refreshing and startling perspective for this piece.
This piece is a study of abrupt endings and sudden changes. The pen’s running out of ink can be seen as a metaphor for any number of things. For example, the ink running out is similar to time running out, pointing out to the painting’s viewer his own imminent mortality. Just as life’s essence can run out, so can natural resources. The pen runs out of ink before it fills the canvas, and so may humans run out of valuable natural resources before mankind has finished its run on this planet. My Pen Doesn’t Work is a clever piece that brings the reader into an awareness of the limited nature of many of life’s most important things.

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