SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION

Welcome to Seven Percent Solution: The Darker Art of Dale Ankrum!

Since childhood, I've been fascinated by the dark and scary--ghosts, haunted houses, stormy nights, essentially all things Halloween. Later that affinity grew to include the fantastic and the historic--particularly the more sinister aesthetic of the Victorian era (readers of Doyle will readily understand the Holmsian allusion in the name of this blog).

Where and why we (particularly in the U.S.) crossed over to an egregious surplus of gore in our movies and so-called "haunted" attractions, I really have no understanding, but we did. Personally, I think it's an affront to the spirit and original intent of constructing a haunted experience.

I think the inclusion of the occasional stray eyeball, bloody handprint, or dismembered appendage is appropriate, but violently immersing audience members into how the eye was extracted or the hand sliced off robs each of them of their unique mechanism for experiencing a benign horror. All imagination with its inherent psychological safety features is gone.

The monster no longer reaches out from the shadows and simply grabs you. Now it slices your Achilles tendon with a scalpel, shoves an ice pick up your nose and into your brain, and then proceeds to cut through your neck with a dull hacksaw so it can do unspeakable things to your severed head.

That's not haunting. In fact, I don't really know what to call it, but you won't find it here.

I have discovered in my work that tendency from childhood toward the dark and witchy is very much alive. I actually prefer to create an image which is dark or low-lit rather than one portraying day lighting. None too good for diversity.

I guess it's my graphic junk food.

So, I've created this blog as a sort of repository or reliquary for those kinds of images arising from my workstream.

Hope you enjoy!

DA