_____These images were many things to me - among their meaning, they constitute some of the expressions of worldly frustration I mentioned in less grotesque pieces. I made these mostly in my last year of high-school, an angst-ridden teen struggling to express himself. The creation of these ill-appealing images was quite therapeautic for me, however - and ultimately helped me break my own destructive cycles by putting a tangable face to some of them. None of these characters are literal interpretations of my demons per se - but the degree of grousomeness contained in the images is indeed an expression of them. I came to call these "reverse-caricatures" - raw, cartoonish exaggerations or even reversals of personality expressed in portraiture. I often had to use my own photograph as a place to start, but as I made these more people became interested and volunteered their image for the project. It never became a solid project in its own right, but did represent lots of learning in photo-manipulative skill - as well as lots of angst-shedding. I'm happy to say the darkness in these images no longer weighs upon me - and I'm inclined to believe that has a lot to do with leaving it on the page.