From 36days
Paul Flippen
Geographic Bachelor
Driving as Love, reprise
Listening to Dad
Driving as Love, coda
Artist’s Statement: I lost my father to a stroke his third day in the hospital.
He didn’t die for another month.
36days examines the emotions and ethics of the end of life, through drawings and text describing the narrative of one family’s experience. Negotiating with doctors, each other, and our own feelings, my family and I sought to do what was best for my father, as he would have defined it.
Thirty-six drawings of pen and ink layered over eroded surfaces of paint weave in and out of thirty-six text panels that detail my relationship with my father and my reactions to his passing. Shifting from crisp scientific renderings to the atmospherics of memory, the words and images navigate one account of modern medicine meeting family history.
Paul Flippen was born in Berlin, Germany, and as an Army Brat bounced around between Germany, Texas and California at the whim of the Pentagon. He earned a BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History, both from the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his studies at Pratt Institute, New York, receiving an MFA in Painting and an MS in the Theory, Criticism and History of Art.