Finding Peace

The two paintings posted here were inspired by peace. Each was created as a metaphorical Ambassador of Peace. During these times marked by political turmoil, corruption, racism, and violence, the wolf and the owl both bring peace. Although they are both fierce predators, go beyond that superficial judgment to find that they are majestic and beautiful creatures, iconic symbols of the natural world of North America.

But each animal has been threatened. They have been wiped out of some entire areas. We must work to protect them — the wolf, especially, as human efforts to reintroduce to them to the wild continue, weaving them back in.

The owl can fly and suddenly appear in unexpected places. Be so lucky to make eye contact with an owl, and it feels like something larger than life.

The blurred image may disturb focus, but it is a metaphor for finding peace in a chaotic world. Peace, that we must strive to protect.

Spreading Peace

Many of us have witnessed the rise of computers and the internet, cell phones, and social media. With these new forms of communication, it is very easy to spread all kinds of ideas and beliefs. As the world these days seems so overwhelmed by hate, racism, war, and violence, I think it is my responsibility to spread peace.

For a few years around the turn of the millennium, I refused to own a cell phone. Now it’s like an appendage to my body. I was in graduate school and remember signing up for Facebook when it was limited to university student profiles. It’s obviously a different beast now, and today social media has an ambiguous effect on our daily lives with its unique cultural currency of humankind.  

It reflects the human condition, some users taking it to the extreme, posting about every banal daily event, or even planning their vacations around what pictures would look best on Instagram. This contemplation conjures up feelings of isolation and loneliness – some of which I’ve expressed in my series One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

But the social media effect goes on. We’re able to follow people we admire, like athletes, artists, and other celebrities. These people have tons of followers and thus tons of influence in the ideas they disseminate. We can like their posts and even comment on them, giving a false feeling that we’re actually connected and involved in their lives.

Most of these people we will never meet face to face, yet social media makes it so easy to judge our own lives against theirs. We also follow and friend regular people we’ve never met. We see their posts and interact with them via likes, comments, and emojis. They might as well be imaginary, as real as Odysseus or Homer Simpson.

It’s a blurry illusion. An ungraspable haze. And that’s the ever-increasing feeling of being plugged in, connected to the machines. And so it calls on many philosophical questions – what is real? Are these social media connections real people? Who really exists? Do I exist to you? Or does the imagination, and our resulting feelings, encompass everything that is, was, and will ever be?

Even so, the imagination and feelings are as real as anything can be. So are ideas. And so is peace. So in this mysterious world of ones and zeroes, by creating something tangible, it helps me make sense of the intangible.  In doing so, it is my mission to contribute peace to the world.

Detail shows the iridescent surface.

Vulnerabilities Of Truth

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… A quote by C.S. Lewis.

The notion of being vulnerable might sound like weakness, but knowing the vulnerabilities exist and embracing them fully makes a person strong. To be vulnerable is to be real, for even the strongest, such as tigers, are vulnerable. In the series One Hundred Years Of Solitude, my art focuses on certain themes central to our emotional and social existence and what makes us human.

The painting is not a depiction of a fantasy. The subjects can be interpreted as metaphors for the fragilities of life — maybe not actual tigers crossing our path, but rather the impediments, emptiness, imminent dangers, deaths, and waning memories, that we all, if we’re being truthful, must inevitably encounter in life, and through which we must make decisions and push forward.

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

An otherworldly realm

I love texture in art, even the most subtle brushstroke that reveals the painting was created by an imperfect human. As machines continue to infiltrate our lives and change how we operate, where we rely on technology and computer processes to make everything more efficient, it is easy to always expect people, society, and relationships to function in similar predictable ways. Nature, however, is not always predictable. Painting is not a digitized flat image on a screen. And it is the imperfect nature of humans and their attachment to art that ignites a fire where computers cannot access, in an otherworldly or spiritual realm. 

This painting continues the Intermission series. The series is about the spaces in between the beacons of our lives. For example, author Stephen R. Covey writes: “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.”

 The above picture is a detail of the surface, and the below is the final piece: Intermission XVII, 36" x 48", acrylic, clay, and epoxy resin on canvas over panel, 2018.