About

The site contains visual works of art across many mediums and styles from traditional drawings and paintings to video clips and films of short and long varieties created for varying purposes, as well as artwork in the form of sound. These audible pieces of art cover a wide range of formats and styles, from music to the audible representation of scenes or environs created in both analog recordings and synthetic instruments.

Please explore the website to find these works of art from the mind of the madman known as massiveRONIN.

massiveRONIN is the artistic alter-ego of S. “Ronin” McGowan. Formed within Ronin’s schizophrenic mind, he believes this alternative persona allows him the freedom to more fully express himself in the manner in which he wishes.

The moniker is intended to be self-deprecating, rooted in the idea that ronin were samurai who had failed in their duties.

As samurai were mercenaries and bodyguards for the shogun masters they served, to have failed means to have caused the death or removal from power of said master.

Greatly dishonored, the failed samurai were expected to commit suicide. If one did not perform the rite of seppuku, the samurai would become a dishonorable person, a ronin. Ronin were less than second-class citizens, worse than the peasant class, and hunted by the new mercenaries and official law enforcing soldiers of the new shogunate who were under standing orders to kill any ronin they found in their search.

This constant threat of death kept the disgraced samurai constantly moving, without permanent home, travelling from town to town in hopes of staying one step ahead of their pursuers.

The artist’s assumed name/title of massiveRONIN was/is supposed to be a representation of being a huge failure, a “less than” person, a massive f^&%¹-up, marked for death and forever dishonored and not to be treated with anything but disdain.