FAMILY PORTRAIT
I’m back with unspeakable horrors! (Click to enlarge)
When I was 8, I drew a very disturbing dog family, and this is a remake in my current style. I basically haven’t drawn in a year, and this was fun ^^
The house is based on the hut where my great-grandmother grew up with her many sisters and brothers. The father was a shoemaker and alcoholic, and most (if not all) kids moved to the city to work in the factories before they were even teenagers, if I remember correctly.
Details, and their partly updated names to fit the Finnish rural horror setting:
Musti (Mother, 43 y.), Noska (15 y.)
Katariina (16 y.), Nosko (20 y.)
Kielis (13 y.), Vihris (17 y.)
Vinos (12 y.), Neni (15 y.) – I don’t know if I did it on purpose when I was 8, but apparently Noska and Neni are twins.
Vihris (17 y.), Viia (20 y.)
Nosne (Father, 44 y.)
The original drawings, that I drew with crayons on the back of my mum’s bank statements in 1989, when I was 8 years old:
OG fans will remember I posted them here already back in 2011 ^^
What is the story behind the decaying (?) snouts of the dogs on the right (ig there is a story)?
As a child, as far as I remember, I drew them like that because I just thought it was funny (?!?!). We had a dog, and my sister and I would have funny ideas about dogs, and we thought their cold and wet nose truffles were really funny somehow. (We still do!) I drew these strange dog characters that got weirder and more extreme – especially their nose truffles – as the portraits progressed …
I drew them in that order, and tacked the pages together, so it’s kind of a little horror comic in the shape of a series of portraits of a family. Quite clever for me at 8 years old, hehe! And a child psychologist would probably have had a field day with it. ^^;
Now as an adult my brain wants to make more sense of it than just “it’s funny/creepy”!
The mother, who looks completely normal (for a dog-human/furry or whatever), has a little pendant with a satanic cross around her neck. And maybe they’re involved with terrible, unspeakable demonic entities or forces that disfigure their bodies?
Maybe the father is the unspeakable entity, and the children have inherited features from each parent to varying degrees?
I used my great-grandma’s hut as the backdrop, because in this type of historical family portraits of peasant and worker families in Finland, they usually posed in their Sunday clothes in front of their home, which may have been a tiny hut in the forest like this.
To me personally this family portrait is kind of the story about how abuse, addiction and pain runs in families, and how children inherit it and carry it on in different ways. Some become abusers in turn. Some turn the abuse against themselves. Some pretend to be ‘normal’, but still carry those demons inside, and avoid close relationships out of fear that they’ll emerge. Some become selfless saviours and helpers devoted to fight injustice. Some become artists and tell the story of their abuse and pain over and over. Some manage to truly overcome it and break the cycle. And of course the same individuals can go through all of these things throughout their lives.
And here that story is told through the lens of lovecraftian horror, and within one single image ^^
On the other hand, someone suggested it’s radiation poisoning, which works quite well, too! :-s I think everyone can interpret this picture in whatever way works or makes sense for them.