2012
"A year of turmoil - in the country, in myself - endings, beginnings -
and where is the shoreline?"
We Forgot
"We forgot...the cost." I despair.
Following the suing by the Federal government of Arizona, an act that betrayed the purpose of our national government and belied "peacemaker Obama's" willingness to sit down and forge a workable agreement, I saw that the United States is under attack - by our own government. I was distraught.
This image kept coming to mind - a free-falling flag where the stripes (the original thirteen states that came together as a union) are no longer sewn together and are separated from the body of stars (all the states).
Never has there been a more urgent time for working for/fighting for the great and primary political value of liberty that the United States has been and still is in the form of its many property-based institutions and the knowledge and values of its people. If we do not secure liberty for ourselves and our posterity, the world will pass into darkness.
And no, we won't adjust and everything will be OK. Some may adjust to a world as Jerry Springer Show because they are OK with lowering their heads and making sure they don't see what is going on. But others will know that most people are shrunken versions of what they could have been. And no, no country can adjust to Statism in any of its forms - socialism, communism, welfare statism, oligarchy or theocracy. No state directed from a point at the top, a pinhead, if you will, can possibly know what has people thrive. When it comes to having people thrive, statists are at the top of the heap of ignoramuses because their fundamental premises is to sacrifice the individual to the state.
We must never forget, other cultures do not have a history of liberty. It is our responsibility to foster it and spread the light of it to others. It is uniquely American.
Wisdom
"The life of an initiated conversation - by one's own will, leaping into the unknown."
For Sale
This painting was created while assisting at the Wisdom Course, a course offered by Landmark Education Corporation - a company whose mission is personal transformation such that one is able to create in the face of upset and threat. One of the projects during this 10 month course consisted of initiating a conversation in the world and continuing to create it through the seven steps of its development until it is out in the world and part of the culture's conversation.
The process of doing this requires continual creation and breaking through the places where one wants to hang on to something he thinks he knows or some comfortable way he behaves that actually stops the continued creation of the conversation in the world.
Three of the steps of the process are stenciled across the paintings. Some of the days of the project are stenciled from bottom to top in the painting. The dark blue, water-like shape at the left represents the old self. The wild "wingy" shape at the right represents the willingness to throw oneself out of his comfort zone, like a fledgling out of the nest for the first time. You do learn to fly.The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
The Rise of the Warrior Spirit
"Enough of the flowers and flo',
This is happening 'cause I said so."
The Aftermath
30"w x 9"h acrylic on canvas, 2004
"Silence and blood - what's left after the fight you had to have."
This painting was inspired when friends were on safari in Tanzania. They told a story of staying at an encampment on the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater. The crater itself is no place for humans. It is a habitat for all the wild animals of the region. Camping on the edge of the crater, one cannot go to the restroom without an armed guard. The painting conveys a sense of the threat to a human that this pristine crater represents. Violent death is a fact of life here. This is the silent aftermath.