This is a triptych I painted with acrylic paint for my boyfriend for Christmas. It is a painting of The Mars Volta with Cedric on the left and Omar on the right. I came up with the middle picture while i was listening to their music. It is a stark and surreal forest with a tarsier on the tree. I thought of it as a sort of metaphor for their music since they take reality and completely distort it in many of their concept albums which is really amazing. The twisting tree in the middle depicts the combination of Cedric and Omar's ideas and talents, forming one huge base for the “forests” that they create. The tarsier represents the spark of life and spontaneity of their songs and how one little idea or riff can create such amazing music and concept worlds. The organic figures (tarsier and tree shape) verses the more unnatural linear outlines of the trees tell about the style of music that The Mars Volta encompasses; Omar takes very organic types of music and sound (for example a simple tea kettle boiling or the laughing of children) and mixes them or distorts them by use of technology and unnatural sounds, therefore giving you both natural and unnatural combo which can also be depicted in the twisting tree. The soft ground was created with direct blend technique which is very different from the simple shapes I made for the trees with their outlining. These alternate techniques are very different but yet work together in the picture, much like Omar’s use of pure and sometimes coarse noise intermittently with his use of smooth delicate music.

Its other meaning comes from the album De-loused in the Comatorium. The tarsier is used as a representation for Cerpin Taxt in the music video for Televators which is why I chose a tarsier as the animal to be in this picture. Cerpin is trapped in an alternate world that he sees as reality since his human form is in a coma. Having the forest appear as a real forest, but be distorted with outlines and inverted coloring shows his alternate world. His organic form as a tarsier yet again shows the idea of how he takes on a strikingly different but familiar form in this Comatorium. The depth of the forest is unknown, forever fading into black shadows that consume Cerpin’s mind as he searches for answers to help him in his new world. He clings to a familiar shape, a strangely twisted tree that represents human reality and this new reality intermixing in Cerpin’s thoughts. He hides, scared, his mind slowly being torn apart as he flickers between the worlds, unsure of where to go or what to do.