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.