DE - no - there is a difference between exploring a theme and a darkness in art, from someone who makes render after render of violent images and does so because it excites him/her. When we make a picture, we do so for our own individual reasons. We don't think of the audience (well I don't) - we make what is in our minds, and it expresses some feeling we want to capture, or exorcise, or evoke. We do not necessarily want what we make. When I made "Self-Mutilation" I did so to express my self-anger in a way that did me no harm. I did not make it because I wanted to slash myself: I made it precisely because I didn't want to. If I made a picture of my boss being stabbed because I was angry at her, and it helped me feel better and less like punching her out, then that's okay. But what if I kept making more and more renders of my boss being killed, tortured, degraded? What if I found I couldn't stop fantasising about it, and the renders were just an aid to that fantasy? It's like the old old hoo-ha over violent films. "If people watch violent films, they will become violent!" No - it's the wrong way round. The films/renders/books aren't the disease, they're the symptom. If I have a violent streak, then I will seek out media that titillate that violence and as I become more and more desensitised, I will need more brutal and violent things to keep the same thrill from it. But watching "Pulp Fiction" isn't going to make me go out and hack someone's ear off :-)

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"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan Shire