RANDY SIMMONS The Sound of Loneliness (Left Its Mark on Her Face), 2025

RANDY SIMMONS  

The Sound of Loneliness (Left Its Mark on Her Face), 2025 

49” x 49” 

charcoal and white conté 

$7,500 

@randysimmonsdrawings 

www.randysimmonsdrawings.com  

It was coming up on two years since we had last spoken to each other. She showed at my front door unexpectedly in October 2024, the afternoon before my birthday and exactly three years to the day she broke it off with me on the phone. I wonder if she realized this anniversary. 

I watched her closely, realizing this wasn’t the same person I used to know. Her speech was more Southern than I remembered. I looked at her silhouette and something about her mouth was different. She glistened in the sunlight from the heat and humidity as we sat outside on the deck swatting away the mosquitoes. I kept noticing the corners of her mouth. They looked white and foamy. What was in that vape? Initially, the conversation was about her, but I didn’t care. We laughed at some of the memories we had. But out of nowhere, she started trashing her family, and then came after me, provoking a fight. She pulled out her iPhone and began video recording me, saying horrible things hoping I’d react. She told me repeatedly that I should kill myself. I was stunned. And during this exchange, I kept asking, “Where is this coming from?” 

Before she left, she used the bathroom at my house and took something sentimental of mine. Maybe she needed a trophy. Only she would know what this one small item meant. I would have given it to her had she asked. 

In this piece, The Sound Of Loneliness, the portrait outlines the shape of the actual birthmark on her face that caused her so much ridicule as a child. I wanted her to be looking out at the world through this. On the bottom left is a vibrator with a mobius strip attachment for eternal solo ecstasy. Bottom right is a tube of lipstick fashioned into a phallic symbol. The tip is surrounded with an optical illusion halo comprised of two circles that seem to be moving and overlap each other but don’t. The background clouds are the same ones I used in a previous drawing, Rocketman, only out of focus.