"Dark Future"

It's odd coming up with names for my paintings, especially for a painting that I painted over 12 years ago. "Dark Future" might be my first ever oil painting. I painted it in high school art class- I don't remember the objective of the assignment or what, if anything, the teacher wanted us to portray in our work, but the message seems obvious. My outlook on the future at this point was not bright. My family had just moved to Richmond, VA, I was a sophomor in high school, I had no friends, and my mom had just passed away. So as you can see, the road ahead is dark and the past as shown in the rear-view mirrors is bright. The top mirror is by brother swinging on a vine at my family's riverhouse and the side mirror is the mountains (my family had just moved from the mountains of Virginia). I'm not sure if you can make it out but the side mirror says, "objects in rearview mirror are closer than they appear." Pretty clever for a high schooler I guess...I'm not sure if I was making a statement with the cross-less steeple at the end of the road...I'll leave that up to the viewer.

An interesting facet of art and artists is that there can be an inverse relationship between the artist's perspective on life and the quality of his work. Sometimes, the darker the mental state, the more interesting the work. I don't want to dwell too much on the negative, but in this case it is apparent that my artwork was a an outlet for negative feelings. I sure as hell didn't talk to anyone about my feelings at the time and don't remember anyone talking to me about them even after this painting hung in the school cafeteria for months. I wonder how a painting like this would be percieved in high schools nowadays? Anyway, I'd like to think that the quality of my work has improved with my mental state, but that's for each individual to judge.