Roadkill

On August 5^th 2012 while reading the Arkansas Democrat Gazette Artbeat section by Ellis Widner I came across an image that was so profound that I had to find out more about it. The image was from a monotype with pastel by Warren Criswell entitled “Roadkill”. These types of images which are dark and mysterious always get my attention for some reason and that is probably some psychological glitch I have been affected by.

My first thoughts occurred when I pondered the artist’s meaning of the subject “Roadkill”. It was disturbing for two reasons, one was that the roadkill described was visually a human figure and two a mythological bird like figure was seemingly eating the corpse on the road.

Over the years I have contemplated the plight of life that I have witnessed being extinguished on highways by manmade vehicles. Quite gory and somewhat disturbing to me was the desire to photograph those mangled bodies known as road kill.

This image by Criswell seemed to be saying that we are witnessing the continuing slaughter of mankind not only here on our highways but also across the globe and even more pathetic in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Just like the animals scattered on our roads, the human losses in war have mostly been ignored, unless a death victim is a relative or friend. The human mind tries to protect itself from the horrors of everyday life and from going “crazy”.

An excellent commentary in the Democrat Gazette recently by Dave Perozek on how we as humans are ignoring the ongoing slaughter of our young people in the unjust wars they are being asked to fight . The two major political parties have rarely mentioned these conflicts in the campaign rhetoric. I continue to sadly read the obituaries of the fallen daily in the newspaper, maybe the list should be placed on the front page in red letters but then over time we would ignore those. How quickly we turn our attention away from issues when someone says we are getting our troops out of the country in conflict. It’s like it’s over but the bodies keep coming home in coffins.

All of this is best summarized by Waylon Jennings in his 1978 hit “I’ve always been crazy” being crazy has “kept me from going insane”.