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Hi, welcome to my site, Click on Pics to see samples of my paintings Outsider, Post-Cyber, visionary, self-taught, and real deal mumbling painter in south-east United States. Here my link to my Flickr gallery. .. ................ ..

Myspace Layouts - Image Hosting - Forums -------------------------------------David Micheal Kirwin---------------- =========================Sept.22,2007================== Artist who's overcome addiction offers works with sobriety as his muse By Beth Jones Staff Writer D.M. Kirwin populates his world with people who have holes where their hearts should be. The characters in his acrylic collection of "heart-gut paintings" look as if some wicked higher power stamped out their middles with a circular cookie cutter. "What goes in that hole?" asked Tim Flinn, owner of the Flat Penny Folk Art Gallery. "I imagine it's something personal." "Nobody lives to their 30s without a hole," Kirwin said. Kirwin's own crater stems from his battle with alcoholism. He started drinking at age 12, getting beer from a friend who snagged it from his parents' fridge. "You kind of go through all these skins," Kirwin said about getting sober. "Demons sneak up on you when you least expect it. You're never quite healed." He read once that heavy drinking depletes the brain's supplies of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that partly governs a person's mood. He's held onto that bit of trivia. "You're drinking away your happiness," Kirwin said of alcoholics. Painting served as a therapeutic tool for the 35-year-old during the 16 months he's been sober. The result of his work is a show called "Addictions" that will hang in Flat Penny through the first weekend in November. One of his paintings, "Crushed," shows a beer can bearing the word "Depression" where the Budweiser label should be. In another, he captures the feet of alcoholics sitting in a circle at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He hopes his artwork will send a message to other artists that it's possible to harness creativity and imagination sober. "I know a lot of artists who are straight," Kirwin said. "They're just as cool as anybody else." Paintings by D.M. Kirwin -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All Contents ©Copyright 2007 Athens Banner-Herald