Behind The Artworks: Reconciler - Three Songs (2025)

In a DIY band, most members have several extra jobs out of necessity because D.I.Y. stands for “poor”. I still have student loans from going to art school in the early 2000s, so I make the art.

The cover art from this EP is an image of a large-scale oil painting from an ongoing series of mine called “Stuck Between Stations”. This series contemplates contemporary life as a struggle to process too much information - perpetual overstimulation. In this series, I’m trying to make something beautiful from the static of being stuck between stations.

The painting from the cover of the ‘Three Songs’ ep, titled Stuck Between Stations #4, explores permanence versus impermanence. The base layer is painted from a photograph I took at the shore of a bay in Iceland where a Glacier, frozen for 10,000 years, now rapidly melts due to climate change. A young Marilyn Monroe in repose obscures the melting bay, forever the epitome of beauty because she died young. The lore of the Red Crowned Crane suggests it lives 1000 years. Of course it doesn’t. Life is short and tomorrow is never guaranteed. Michelangelo’s Pieta, a depiction of sorrow, acceptance, and compassion in the face of death - and a reminder of the brilliance of human potential is barely visible. If we were aiming for another age of enlightenment, we missed. In dark times, the Coral Snake’s honesty almost feels like kindness.