Artist That Draw: Trenton Doyle Hancock

"Cult Jam"- Trenton Doyle Hancock

     Looking at the piece "Cult Jam," by Hancock, he uses a mix of ink drawings, acrylic paint, and prints on canvas to tell the story of Mounds vs. Vegans. Overall the story is about Good(The Mounds, which are half plant and animal creatures) vs. Evil(The Vegans). They are at war because Mounds are obsessed with getting bigger and the Vegans want everything to be smaller and see Mounds as a threat to the balance of their world. In his drawings, I believe that Hancock uses the ink drawing and prints to show how the Vegans see the world, because they are said to be color blind due to inbreeding and see everything in black and white. Hancock in his eyes sees color as goodness, so when he uses color in his drawings it represents the goodness that the Mounds use to fight Vegans. It seems he also uses acrylic paint, which is made out of synthetic pigments, for the color to depict this unreal, artificial world with these unnatural hues of colors that are not found easily unless they are made. Hancock's use of these mediums aid in the whole story by giving meaning to things that we would not see as much in our world. He makes simple things as color, vegetarianism, size, and simple beliefs controversial in this fictional world, so much as to fuel wars between these groups. The allegorical message of the all the mixed media kind of relates to the real world as well because we have wars with other people just because their beliefs are different than ours and they pose a threat to our culture. So maybe he is trying to show viewers how silly our world is, but in a more suttle way as to not offend anyone directly to try and change our perspective on our own world.