No More Marilyn Manson

When painting portraits one always runs the risk of depicting a flawed or unpopular individual. As an artist one must paint what inspires them and that may change over time. Change is the one constant and my painting of Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner) is a great example.

Originally I was inspired by Manson’s creepy and otherworldly image - his white makeup lending itself to merge with the wood grains (on the panels I like to paint on) in a haunting way. I was never a fan of his music, knew little about him as a person - I just knew his dark projected image hooked me in.

Recently many women have come forward to describe disgusting abuse and misogyny on Manson’s part. Below are just a few excerpts of this behavior.

He had “a a solitary-confinement cell used to psychologically torture women. Warner frequently banished his girlfriends there, keeping them inside for hours on end to punish them for the tiniest perceived transgressions. He called it the “Bad Girls’ Room.”

Ashley Walters, a former assistant suing Warner for sexual assault and other charges, says he enjoyed telling people about the chamber. “He always had a joking, bragging tone,” she remembers. “If anyone’s bad, I can lock them in it, and it’s soundproof,” Warner boasted to a magazine in 2012. Ashley Morgan Smithline tells Rolling Stone that Warner repeatedly forced her to stay in the space — which was about the size of a department-store dressing room — for hours at a time when they were dating. “At first, he made it sound cool,” Smithline says. “Then, he made it sound very punitive. Even if I was screaming, no one would hear me.” As she tells it, “First you fight, and he enjoys the struggle. I learned to not fight it, because that was giving him what he wanted. I just went somewhere else in my head.” It was here, multiple exes allege, that Warner inflicted repeated acts of mental, physical, and sexual abuse that have left them with crippling bouts of anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and PTSD.

Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco alleges that Warner frequently abused her verbally; deprived her of sleep and food; bit, cut, electrocuted, and whipped her without her consent; and raped her during their two years together. In one horrifying episode, Warner wielded an ax and chased her around the apartment smashing holes in the walls after saying she was “crowding him.” Manson who allegedly bragged about having a “rape room” in his apartment to a teenage Phoebe Bridgers.

Evan Rachel Wood spoke to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act. “My experience with domestic violence was this, toxic mental, physical, and sexual abuse, which started slow, but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gaslighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me raping what he believed to be my unconscious body, and the worst part, sick rituals of binding me up by my hands and feet to be mentally and physically tortured until my abuser felt I had ‘proven my love for them.’

These are just a few of the women abused by Warner - if you want to dive deeper into the sick animal Warner is - here is a link to the Rolling Stone article.

So my quandary was this - how to destroy my painting of this abuser? I felt being painted by me was an honor he did not deserve. So I took the art and painted a big dark X through his face and boy, did it feel good! I will burn the art and enjoy watching his face covered in flames. Sexual assault is a horrific experience and predators need to be exposed and punished. In the meantime I will dig a little deeper into subjects before I paint them… and enjoy vengeful retribution renouncing victim hood.