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Studio Q Photography

Exploring Human Behavior and Death Anxiety Through Art
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“Black Hole Sun," 4” x 5” (10 x 12cm), acrylic mixed-media on paper. May 2025.

Black Hole Sun is the title of a Soundgarden song from 1994. If you haven't had the chance to hear it yet, I recommend looking it up and giving it a listen (https://youtu.be/Y6Kz6aXsBSs?si=QnPLljRd7jjB4cII). Chris Cornell wrote it. He said the lyrics were written quickly, almost unconsciously, and that the phrase “black hole sun” just came to him. He described it as a kind of dreamlike, apocalyptic image—something that sounds meaningful and ominous, evoking a dark, consuming force juxtaposed with something typically life-giving like the sun.

Some possible meanings: A corrupted source of light or hope: A black hole sun implies the very thing that gives life (the sun) has turned destructive or empty. Despair disguised as beauty: The melody is melancholic but beautiful—mirroring the idea that what seems luminous (sun) might actually be devouring (black hole). Or maybe cultural decay or emotional numbness: Many see the song as a commentary on disillusionment with modern life, media, or personal alienation.

The Painting
This little mixed-media painting captures that tension between vitality and decay that I've been exploring in my work on death anxiety. That vibrant red-orange tree form seems to be both blooming and dissolving simultaneously against the textured earthy background.

The impasto technique I used for the tree (paint skin) creates this almost visceral quality—like the red is erupting from the canvas, asserting its presence against the void. Becker would see the painting as a perfect visualization of our heroic strivings against mortality. We reach upward like that tree, bright and defiant while rooted in knowledge of our eventual dissolution.

The textural contrasts are working well—the thick, sculptural quality of the red against the scratched, layered browns and blacks. That small touch of yellow creates an intriguing focal point that draws the eye upward. The rectangular form to the right (crossword puzzle) suggests a doorway or window—perhaps a symbolic threshold between existence and non-existence.

What's most successful is how the painting doesn't resolve the tension it creates. In the spirit of existentialism, it presents the paradox without offering easy comfort. The tree is both beautiful and somehow wounded, much like our own creative efforts to establish meaning in the face of mortality.

The dark trunk grounding the red canopy reminds me of what Terror Management Theory suggests—that our awareness of death is the black shadow beneath our most vibrant expressions of life. Yet we create anyway. We make beauty despite it all.

Between Being and Ending: The Existential Significance of Art in a Finite Life

Quinn Jacobson May 9, 2025

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I'm taking on with the PhD work I'll soon be embarking on. I've been trying to build ideas around what I'm preoccupied with and the best ways to articulate it. Titles and the ideas that come from them seem to help me a lot. Here's a short one I just completed.

This title really captures something essential about my inquiry. What does it mean to create while knowing we will die? Why do I pick up a brush, knowing both I and the painting will eventually disappear?

The phrase "Between Being and Ending" places my artistic practice in that strange, tense space between existence and nonexistence. As an artist, I live in this in-between consciously—I'm painfully aware of my temporary nature while simultaneously working against it. This "betweenness" isn't just some abstract concept but something I feel physically in my studio, in my body, in those moments when creation happens. I want my research to dig into this lived experience of making art while death-aware.

I'm drawn to existentialism because thinkers like Heidegger talked about "being-toward-death" as the most authentic way to exist, and Camus somehow found meaning despite the absurdity of it all. I think art-making isn't just a psychological defense against death anxiety (though Ernest Becker would say it is) but a fundamental way of building meaning in an existence that doesn't come with meaning built-in.

What fascinates me is whether we artists face mortality differently. Does the act of creation offer us a particular kind of existential authenticity that might not be as available to non-artists? Looking at how artists throughout history have positioned themselves in this tension between being and ending—from memento mori paintings to Rothko's void-like color fields—there seems to be something unique happening.

“My purpose is to use art as a mirror—confronting mortality, memory, and denial—to reveal what we’d rather not see and to ask what we might create from that truth.

I see my calling as this: to bring death back into the room—not for shock, but for clarity. Through art, writing, and dialogue, I work to transform death anxiety into something conscious, creative, and potentially redemptive.”
— Quinn Jacobson

Of course, my own artistic practice becomes a case study in all this. How does my awareness that I'll die shape what and how I create? How does my art simultaneously confront and transcend my mortality? The personal and the philosophical are completely intertwined here.

Beyond just me and my studio, I'm curious about how art functions culturally as a response to mortality. Through Becker's lens, art becomes a significant "immortality project"—a culturally validated way of symbolically extending beyond our biological limits. Art isn't just personal expression but a culturally embedded practice with existential significance.

This framework feels right for combining phenomenological investigation (the lived experience of creating under mortality's shadow), cultural analysis (how art functions as immortality project), and autobiographical reflection (my own artistic practice as case study).

I think this title captures the philosophical depth I'm seeking while remaining accessible and evocative. It acknowledges both the universal human condition of mortality and the particular way artists engage with this condition through their work. It positions my research at the intersection of existential philosophy, terror management theory, and artistic practice—precisely where I believe the most interesting insights will emerge.

Now to begin the actual work of existing between being and ending...

In Acrylic Painting, Art & Theory, Confronting the Void, Death Anxiety, Doctoral Studies Tags acrylic painting, Mixed Media, Black Hole Sun
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