Ballpoint Fury: A Brief Explanation

Ballpoint:

/ˈbôlˌpoint,ˈbälˌpoint/ Noun.

a pen having, as the writing point, a small rotating metal ball that inks itself by contact with an inner magazine.

Fury:

/fyo͞orē/ Noun.

intense, disordered, and passionate anger that often includes violent behavior

Ballpoint Fury is an alias I sometimes use and the name of my art practice.

The phrase found me when I was seventeen reading Sam Kieth’s artist blog. He was describing his sketch Marvel’s Nick Fury.

The phrase felt like the perfect description of my approach to art making.

The ballpoint pen represents my love of drawing and preference for accessible materials, the aesthetic of my work relies upon technique alone, not cutting edge equipment.

Fury comes from passion, and passion is at the heart of any art practice. Harnessing passion from frustration into visual embodiments of the modern moment is the guiding pillar of my work.

Artist’s Statement

My art work pulls heavily from the marvel comic book illustrations my father used to teach me the basics of drawing as a child, this is most apparent in my use of line. My preference for drawing stems from this early training, I consider drawing a primary building block of visual communication. In essence, drawing is a relatable action to most people even if they’ve only ever doodled in the margins of their notes.

Additionally, my application of material and choice of subject matter is often informed by graffiti culture — a main interest of mine throughout my teen years. Graffiti was the first time I saw art free from the restraint of societal convention. Ideas like talent, skill and fame were reconstructed by the creative criminal by reappropriating elements and principles of art into tools of class conflict, mobilized to create direct conversation between community members and the powers influencing conditions within and around it.

Finally, my overall mindset in the creative act is strongly influenced by the DIY mindset of punk art from the 1970s through the 1990s. These influences culminate to create a visual vocabulary I use in the hopes of addressing issues of class, community, and bicultural identity.

Influences:

  • Arlene Valencia Correa

  • Barry McGee

  • Hung Liu

  • James Grosso

  • Jorden Nickel

  • Jose Pulido

  • Julian Carter

  • Kim Jung Gi

  • Pushead

  • Ralph Steadman

  • Raymond Pettibond

  • Tommy Hopkins

  • Wayne White

  • Wally Wood