America the Beautiful

America the Beautiful

 

 

This picture is a visual metaphor for the unrecorded collateral damage caused to Americans by American war.  Bombs bursting in air.

In this picture, a cherubic brother and sister walk through a heavenly landscape.  Overhead insectoid helicopters threaten to spit death.  Usually, our death machines spray brown people.  Here we see blue eyed, blond children to illustrate that when America goes to war, we also damage ourselves. The unseen damage done to returning soldiers and their families can be as great as the war kill body count. Domino effect collateral damage is not factored into the official war losses.  Soldier suicide rates are high.  Who is counting the suicides that occur after discharge?  Widows and fatherless children suffer immeasurable damage.  Post traumatic stress disorder in soldiers emotionally cripples  the men for the rest of their lives and distresses their families.

This visual metaphor works for me and I hope that it works for you. 

I must thank the amazing British graffiti artist, Banksy for this inspiration.  Thanks Banksy!

I think that really civilized people would find ways to solve problems without resorting to barbaric war. 
 

The body count is only a small part of the expense of war.  Money is the smallest part of the expense.  Unrecorded collateral damage to the "American conquerors" is horrifying.    The domino effect of collateral damage, applies not only to the country that is invaded, but also to the invaders.

 

My hairdresser, Angelle, is a foster parent angel.  She took in a one year old baby, call him Sam.  Sam's father had been deployed to Iraq.  After his military service,  Daddy returned home with an intact body.  One week after discharge,  he blasted a terminal gunshot wound to his head.  Sam's Mommy, in hellish grief, turned to crack.  Using the drug she created for herself a hell on earth.  She found this drug hell preferable to the hell of grief over the senseless death of her husband.  Sam ended up in foster care.  His only stroke of luck was to get Angelle as his foster mother.  Sam was developmentally retarded, from sharing two levels of hell with his Mom.  It took months of Tender Loving Care from Angelle to help him trust again. 

 

Daddy did not show up in the body count.  Mommy was not counted.  Even with a good foster mother,  Sam will have emotional challenges that last his entire lifetime.  These tragedies do not show up on any balance sheet.  But, they are the heartbreaking domino effect, collateral damage cost of war. 

 

This is a clipping from Wikipedia:

       U.S. Army report indicates military veterans have double the suicide rate of non-veterans, and more active-duty soldiers are dying from suicide than in combat in the Iraq War (2003-2011) and War in Afghanistan (2001–present).^[11] Colonel Carl Castro, director of military operational medical research for the Army noted "there needs to be a cultural shift in the military to get people to focus more on mental health and fitness."^[12]

 

This bears repeating  "More active duty soldiers are dying from suicide than in combat in...current wars."  WHY? What does this mean?  Young men enter military service to patriotically fight for their country.  Next they commit suicide.  What happened?

 

Mental health?  Does the Colonel mean that you should have a good attitude to kill?  How does that work? 

 

I just do not get it!  Why do we have endless wars?  None of the answers make sense to me.  There must be another way.

 

Do we war for petroleum?  Disgusting reason.  Then let us stop all the caffeine fueled driving around in circles.  Do our cars run on blood?  The blood of murdered enemies?  The blood of our soldiers? The collateral damage blood?

 

They tell me that Saddam Husein had to be killed.  I don't get it.  How many lives did it cost?  Husein murdered his own people and raped the environment.  For nine years we murdered Iraq people and sent our sons to death and raped the environment.  Are we the good guys?

 

Then there is the argument that we must  show strength in order to scare off the bully countries.  Something like that.  How is it worded?  Is this true???  We out bully the bullies? Is that a sane intervention?  What about the tactic taught in good martial arts classes?  Just having the strength is enough, it is not necessary to use it.  We are not really civilized.  We are barbarians.  We are not very highly evolved.  Really civilized people work out their differences without resorting to violence. 

 

We patriotically protect our way of life, they say, that is why we bomb brown people.   But, we are over consumers, wasteful and arrogant and our children are spoiled.  We protect a way of life that uses resources like tissue paper.  Our homes are constipated with consumer goods produced by slave labor in third world countries.  Our greed knows no bounds. Should people die to support our gluttonous way of life?

 

Don't get me started on a rant.

There must be another way.

There are some good things about America.  Good people.  Beautiful scenery.  Free speech.  I am exercising my patriotic  right to free speech.  I love my country but hate war.

 

 

OK,  I must go now.  I am going shopping, even though I already have too much stuff.  I dare you to open my closet doors.  Don't forget to wear a helmet for protection when all the junk falls out.  I must have the very latest T-shirt and jeans. My old jeans are so last year.  I will max out my credit cards.  It is the American way.  I am a good patriotic consumer supporting the economy.  The debt that I incur will insure that I continue working my bull shit job, and continue contributing my stressed filled labor to the American way of life.    Wrong.  Ironic black humor.

 

America the Beautiful.  Where is it?  How does it work?  How can we make it better?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Madonna for Primates

 



Madonna for Primates

 

 

 

Detail

 

 

Finally, a compassionate mother goddess for gorrillas and apes.  Animals have rights too, you know.  They have needs and emotions similar to humans.  No longer must they settle on worshiping a human Madonna, finally they have a representation from their own ethnic group.  A gorrilafication of their deep need for unending, all accepting mother love.   Apes, gorillas, and even monkeys, can meditate on this image and feel their hearts expand with the warmth of perfect love.

 

All they need now is a primate friendly church.  You may send a donation for the Holy Gorilla Tabernacle of Devine Primates Building Fund to my address.  Be generous. 

 

This is the digital picture that I am working on now.  Madonna for Primates, continues the themes, the series of Mary is My Muse, and The Persistence of Worship.  Religious mashup is the name of the game.  I am really trying to be respectful of religion, but the devil made me do it.  I mean, I think that a lighthearted approach to religion is helpful.  No disrespect intended. 

 

This px continues my artistic research into deep religious needs.  It illustrates that love is cross species.  Love flows through all cultures, ethnic groups, and many species. 

I have seen a mother cat hug a kitten.  The kitten was separated from her mother for about twenty hours. You could see that they were joyful to be reunited.  Mama cat lay on her back, with baby on her stomach, she hugged the child to her chest.

 Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall taught us much about love in primates. 

 

 

 When painting,  I continue to chase beauty.  The hues here satisfy my hunger for color.   The shapes compose interlocking circles, similar to a spiral.  You may see spiral composition in some of my other pictures.  Madonna, roughly a pyramid shape, is stable, grounded and protective. 

 

Halos, as I have mentioned before, offer room for poetic license.  Madonna Primate wears a halo which is a translation of the famous rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.  The top of the background borrows from a Clarence John McLaughlin photograph.  The bottom of the loosely interpreted jungle scene uses a vintage botanical print for reference.  This was a beautiful print until I started messing with it.  You can still identify the Venus Fly Trap and Pitcher Plants. The smiles of the mother and child are entirely my fault.  No one else should be blamed. 

Hey yall,  leave a comment, I want to know what you think.  Hate it? Love it? Indifferent?  Please let me know how you react to my babbling and dabbling.

 

 

 

   

Altar Alter

 Alter Altar 

 

 

 

 

Alter Altar with Bleeding Jesus

 

 

 

  Balloon Girl

Detail.  One of my cherubs

 

 

 

 

Bleeding Jesus and Buddha

Detail

 

 

 

Lucky Dog Cherub

 



Monkey, Hanging Out

Detail

 

Lessons from Jim Jonestown

Ganesha Kaleidoscope 

Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles

Ganesha in Blue

 

Lessons From Jim Jones-town

An extreme example of religion hijacking the deep needs of humans

Led by evangelist Jim Jones, nine hundred American people performed mass suicide by drinking cyanide laced kool aide, on November 18, 1978, in the jungle of Guyana.

How can this happen??? I know that people are crazy, but this boggles the mind.  Women gave their babies poison, and then took their own dose. NINE HUNDRED.

An extreme example of religion hijacking humanity's deepest needs. An example of people who were searching for answers, community, spiritual elation.  People who wanted to know how to do the right thing.  People who wanted to be told how to do right.  They wanted a saintly leader.  Jim Jones hooked into these needs and led them to mass suicide.

Recently I watched the documentary,  "American Experience: Jones-town The Life and Death of Peoples Temple", PBS.  I ordered the video from Netflicks because I was curious as to why 900 people would die on the command of a religious leader.  This continues my artistic research into, The Persistence of Worship.  I watched the video and saw that it had significance for my subject, so I watched it again and wrote notes.

Mothers gave their babies the poison, watched them die, and then took their own lethal kool aide.  Real life, worse than a horror movie.  How can this happen?  What does this tell us about being a human?  For on some level we are all mostly alike, sharing the same DNA, the same cerebral hills and valleys.  We may say, "Oh, I would never do that."  But we do not know what we would do in extreme circumstances.  Only six of the congregation escaped into the jungle.

Yes, I am sure that we all consider ourselves more mentally healthy than the pitiful followers of a psychopathic preacher.

And, I guess, most of us are more healthy.  People who are vulnerable to cult behavior do not have a strong and workable belief system, so they welcome a charismatic, authoritarian father figure, to tell them what to believe and what to do. They want their life to have meaning.

I have heard that  some people have good parents.

That is what I heard, some people have good parents.  But, I have come to think that parenting is impossible to get perfectly right.  There are to many factors involved in life on earth for anyone to get it exactly right.  Really, we just dont know what to do.  We are confused and ignorant and wonderfully wise.

Denial, better known as positive thinking, does help. It is better not to think about it to much.  It is better to go rake the leaves. I think that I will make a pot of jambalaya.  Chicken and sausage with jasmine rice.

 Most of us are still searching for perfect parental love. Searching for the person who will celebrate our faults. We tend to project our image of the perfect father onto preachers and Gods, (celebrities and royalty).. We see the longing movies of our minds on the screen of a person who demonstrates a few of the characteristics for which we are searching. 

The human condition, the conundrum is that we know so much, but we are unable to answer the biggest questions.  We have a need to know.  Jim Jones hooked into deep basic needs, just as any religion does.

We want control, but life can knock us down with surprising disasters.  We are buffeted by Biblical intensity weather.  Tomorrow is uncertain.  You, I, us, our life could be wiped out on the road this afternoon.  Any of us or our loved ones could disappear forever due to a very small blood clot. We can loose our jobs.  The list of blows is endless. Religions offer the impression that people may pray to God, perform rituals, and have some control and  protection.

How much of our activity is exerted in order to distract us from these hard, mostly denied truths?  We manage to live.  Even to thrive.  In spite of our ignorance. Denial helps.


Loving and creating is the best revenge. 


Here is what Wikipedia writes about the psychology of cult followers:

Under Langone's deliberative model, people are said to join cults primarily because of how they view a particular group. Langone notes that this view is most favored among sociologists and religious scholars. Under the "psychodynamic model", popular with some mental health professionals, individuals choose to join for fulfillment of subconscious psychological needs. Finally, the "thought reform model" states that people do not join because of their own psychological needs, but because of the group's influence through forms of psychological manipulation. Langone claims that those mental health experts who have more direct experience with large numbers of cultists tend to favor this latter view

At the same time, she adds, labeling a group a "cult" makes people feel safe, because the "violence associated with religion is split off from conventional religions, projected onto others, and imagined to involve only aberrant groups."^[49] This fails to take into account that child abuse, sexual abuse, financial extortion and warfare have also been committed by believers of mainstream religions, but the pejorative "cult" stereotype makes it easier to avoid confronting this uncomfortable fact. 


Yea, you may die this afternoon.  No, I cannot tell you, no one can tell you, what the fug you should do. No one can tell you, they may give you hints, but really no one knows.  Bad shit happens all the time. But, many  wonderful things can also happen.  Other people give us the gifts of their love and attention.  We often obtain our goals.  I did not say that it is all bad.  It is crazy, wonderful, sucky bad, delicious  good, all mixed together. The agony and the ecstasy, so intertwined, so very twisted.

Paintings from the "Persistence of Worship Series"

 MARY AND KRISHNA

Oil on canvas, 48"x36", 2012

YOSHODA AND JESUS

Oil on canvas, 48"x36", 10/2012

 Yashoda and Jesus

Photograph of painting on easel

 

 Paintings from the Persistence of Worship Series 

 In my blog from August, I documented the painting on canvas of Yoshoda and Jesus.  After that blog I painted for a few more weeks.  I intended to document finishing the painting, and, I took some pictures but they did not come out well.  The pictures here show the completed painting, a photographed version and a digitally enhanced version of the photo.  Since the August  documentation I mainly changed the face of Jesus.  And did several days of detail polishing. 

 The finished work is a visual feast on canvas,  intriguing images in sumptuous color. My son said,  "It looks playful, inspiring.  I think that it means something, but I dont know what? "  Which shows that he does not read my blog. He is too busy, raising a family. I liked his uninformed feed back.

Don Marshal,  New Orleans art royalty at the Contemporary Arts Center said that my work is "fresh and edgy".  I thank him for that. 

After the painting was finished I took the photo and worked it in Photo Shop.  I am better at digital painting than photography.  So the whole process went like this,  I first created the digital image, made a print and used it as a model for the hard oil on canvas, then photographed, then worked again in digital.  I am resisting the urge to touch up the canvas again.  Art is never finished, you just move on to the next project.

I re-posted the Mary and Krishna, in order to have the pair, Mary and Yoshada, in close proximity.  These two pictures are an artistic epiphany.  Following my muse, I often do not know where she will lead, I get an idea for a picture and toss it around in my mind for a while.  Some of the work is done while I am sleeping.  The Persistence of Worship Series, has been a interesting vein to mine.  The words come after the pictures.  The concept is verbalized after the series is in process. The series has motivated me to examine my personal belief system, and scan the history of world religions. Artistic process as a form of research.  Introspective research combined with not very rigorous historical research. 

The Mary and Yoshoda pictures, (switched at birth), illustrate, to put it into a nutshell, "The universal human need to give and receive compassionate, nonjudgmental love."
 

I AM CONFUSED, IS THAT A PROBLEM?

When, in my last post, I said that I am an admitted stupid human, I am referring to the humankind predicament of not knowing.  Our not knowing of the most important big questions.  "What am I?  What should I do? Will Katrina come back?"  The human race experiences a constant, mostly unconscious and denied, insecurity,  because these questions are never empirically satisfied. Personally, I am blessed with a fairly sharp intelligence and abundant creativity but must admit that I am missing a few marbles.  Oh, well. You may have noticed the missing marbles part.  I blame it on ADD, Attention to a Different Drummer. 

Clipboard Notes

 Random Musings

Question Everything!!!  It is a Quest Thing!

Soul is the same, the world over.

Take me to your lier.

If you are bored, then be grateful.  Your mind is an empty house and the world is full of furniture.

Auntie Mame said,  "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

I think that greed is a big problem in this market fueled culture.  Our problem is to distinguish between our needs and our wants. 

When did shopping become the highest endeavor of human kind?

I am confused.  An acknowledged case of normal human stupidity.

There are many positive aspects to organized religion.  I am thinking about making a list.  Steven Johnson listed a few benefits of church attendance.  I only caught the end of the program.   He said, on Book TV, and I paraphrase, "Feeling of being a part of something larger than oneself.  Feeling of working to make things better.  Feeling of the sublime."

Yashoday and Jesus, oil on canvas

August 9, 2012

 

 Yashoda and Jesus

Creating Something that has Never Been Seen Before

A Picture Totally New to the World

Painting Process Documentation

May, 2012.  My muse has been leading me down a golden path of visual exploration and discovery. For many years, I dallied with graven images of ancient gods and goddesses. I began to see that celebrities inhabit the Hollywood pantheon of early twenty first century chaos. So, I wrestled with the features of celebrities. Following Queen Muse, step by step, I came to the place were celebrity faces inhabit the bodies of deified concepts. Celebrities were matched and mated with ancient deities and pictures created.  Belushi Bacchus,  Angelina Medusa,  Oprah Cleopatra, (Cleopatra not technically a goddess, but close enough).  

I thought, who is the biggest celebrity of all times?  Mary Madonna became my muse.  I gave her a modern day makeover.  Her look was sooo unfashionable. 

In May this year, I discovered that Jesus and Krishna had been switched at birth in an alternate reality. I visualized the two pictures and started working them with Photo Shop. 

August 9, 2012.  I start the Yoshoda and Jesus painting on canvas on a quiet, overcast day. The creation of this image began earlier when I made the digital version.  I print out the digital version and use it  as a draft, a reference, a study.   The first marks on the 36"x48" canvas are conte chalk,  to map out the primary lines.   I do measurements on the study,  to translate the proportions to the canvas. I have dyslexia for the measurements, finally I guesstimate placement.  I have a nice studio where I can work, mostly undisturbed, in a beautiful setting.  An estimate of the hours that I work in the studio is 30-40 hours per week.  I do Photoshop almost daily.

August 12.  After the third day,  I have the main areas of color blocked in.  The dogs,  Harpo and Princess Fou Fou, hang out with me.  When it rains, almost everyday, the weather cools slightly, and I open the two sets of double doors of the studio, the north side looks onto a small scraggly lawn and trees, and the west side looks into the Louisiana jungle.

 I work all over the canvas.  I use large brushes first and work my way down to tiny red sable brushes for detail. Brush techniques include lines, scrubbing with the ragged bristles of old brushes, scrumbling (which was a favorite of  Monet),  dancing brush, and lots of glazing.  I want the style to be painterly, but often that desire is overruled by the wish for fine detail in some places. The small brush is annoying, I consider changing my style.  I wont change, I like this style. It is pop art influenced.

There are many Yin/Yang decisions to be made.  Painterly vs detail.  Realistic vs expressive design.  Saturated exciting color vs elegant muted tones.  For the past few years I have exploded with saturated colors.

 August 16.  Continuing to paint all over the canvas, I refine and define.  I think that my current style looks like vintage illustration for children's books.  My Mother read to me when I was a child and I read to my children. I give my grandchildren books.  This is one of the best things that a mother can do for a child. "The Color Kittens", was a preschool favorite of mine. It taught me the color wheel early. I was tuned into color as a baby, I remember.

I just gave you advice on child care.  That correlates with the interest in mother and child icons.  This image is a visual metaphor for the human longing for joyful, comforting, totally accepting, supportive, heavenly, motherly love.   The use of figures from different cultures emphasizes that this longing is global, a desire of all humans. The image comforts us because it portrays ideal compassion.

Even excellent mothers sometimes let their children down.  It is the most challenging job in the world. The care of children gives us a second chance, to attempt the creation of perfect love.

Here is a vast generalization;  Mother love is accepting, father love challenges us to be better. We need both the Yin and the Yang. 

 August 17.  The digital version of this image has a camellia flower for an aura.  Aura's allow lots of  room for play.  I used to see aura's in time past, when I was doing a lot of meditation, fasting and yoga. When in an altered state, I saw lights around people.  Somehow, I have moved away from those spiritual practices.  I always plan to get back to it.  But, I would rather paint and garden.  Maybe next week.

I think that you might call me an explorer of inner consciousness.  This is part of my artistic practice. 

August 18. Auras appear as ethereal, transparent, colored light; with flow, movement.  Here I made large halos with floating flowers.  The digital study has a tree, here I put the figures in heavenly clouds.

The baby face really does not please me.  I change the features many times.  But, still trying to get it right.  I wish that I could paint better. 

Weather remains hot,  but if I dress lightly, I like the doors open.  Love bugs land on the canvas, while doing a flying fuggle.  The love bug season comes every year to Louisiana.  They can be annoying, their gism gets tragically splattered all over our cars.  They come in swarms.  But, what an inspiring reminder that this creature on this amazing Earth, exists simply to do the Flying Fruggle.

 Adjusting placement of features, and detailing take a lot of time.  Pleasurable time.  I like the clouds, they get better everyday.

To be continued