|
My nose is the barometer of how well I am living and lately it sounds like a broken tuba.
I have stopped counting the many triggers to igniting the sneezing, wheezing and running of this faucet. Allergies you say? Maybe. But why then does it act up when I am simply doing a mental number on myself. You know, coddling those thoughts that say I am getting fat, stupid, living a meaningless existence, not good enough and so on and so forth. Painting was once a life saver, now it is more of a chore. Since I have been painting everyday it feels more like the act of washing dishes than anything special. And I am also now allergic to paints. As soon as i open a can of it, I blow my nose so much that like Van Gogh with his irritating ear, I would like to cut it off. Art is no longer a holy grail but a way to pass time until the curtain falls. I am jealous of people who can make food and eating into a sacred act. Somehow the whole process of cooking, chewing and then defecating never caught my fire. I think if my allergies clear up and I stop sounding like a wounded elephant, I might finally fathom the meaning of life before I go. I was born in Poland and have lived half my life here, in Toronto. Both countries have influenced and shaped my art, for better or worse. But, mostly it has been introverted meditation and silence that gave birth to the images in my paintings, telling a story of my inner worlds.
Also I am a keen observer of life and people and have attempted to share my observations by painting mainly women. Many Strings symbolize our connectedness to all of life and each other. We can not exist as isolated beings, divorced from Nature or even ourselves. I am a seeker of what is real and true, even if ultimately it does not exist. There is too much pretence and role playing in our worlds, false opinions that cause us to war with each other about who is right and which country and religion. In all this, love is lost. The heart has become a mere superficial iconic symbol on social media. I ask whether by clicking on countless hearts on the web we have become superficial and depthless humans, careless about the plight and suffering of our fellow men and women. The American Dream has become a Nightmare. We need a new paradigm for our economy.
Lets talk about post corporate and extreme capitalism life. How can new companies actually look. They would be based on a cooperative model of profit sharing and decision making and co-creation. I used to do creativity workshops in businesses and there is possible a different paradigm in business based on Generative rather than Consumption Oriented Community. Companies as arenas for creativity and cooperation with an organizational structure that eliminates hierarchy. And establishes instead a collaborative process of problem-solving, goal setting, personal growth and profit sharing, and profits that come back to the company. Capitalism needs to change if we are to survive. The visible difference between the corporation of the future and its present-day counterpart will not be the products they make or the equipment they use but who will be working, how they will be working, why they will be working and what work will mean to them. Thinking about how our society, especially America has become so amoral in recent times, makes me realize that people are simply not spiritual and enlightened enough to live without religion. They need the laws to choose to do the right thing. But of course besides guidance and a certain safety that religion provides there is also the cult of the other, the different, which needs to to be vilified. So besides love, religion teaches hate.
Social media has become increasingly a new venue for amorality. For example before there were strip clubs that men occasionally attended but now porn is at the touch of your button with you every minute. It is much harder to fight temptation without external guidance and a belief in a Universe that does not condone porn... Maybe only a discovery of your own inner goodness and moral backbone is all there is for now. HI read a while back, when Norval Morrisseau, who in the 90's was the only Canadian artist known in Paris, was told by the National Gallery when he tried to donate a work, that he should try the Heritage Museum. Norval Morrisseau responded with, "I'm not dead yet".
The white man's guilt for being racists and general schmucks towards black and indigenous people is now causing a backlash of what I think stupid decisions. The point is to open up the art venues in Canada to be more inclusive and accepting of black artists and indigenous artists and women (yes still women are way behind in being included). Instead they are creating separate venues for black artists and separate again for indigenous artists. Nothing for women artists. What this will create is an art ghetto situation, where once again the art powers at be will only show male white artists and they will contimue to dominate, while the poor second cousins will continue to be poor. And racism will continue as is. I don't know about you but I paint over my paintings regularly as I just can't afford new canvasses everytime I have a new idea. Then I usually say goodbye to the old one and proceed.
It occurred to me that, that is what Tibetan Monks do when they make sand paintings. They work for days to make a beautiful mandala with coloured sand, then at the end blow it all away. A reminder of impermanence of life as we know it. In digital parlance, pixels come together to form an image on a screen.
By the same token quarks in life do the same as physics have proven. A quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter.. in other words we are all made up of quarks as is all living matter. According to the theory laid out by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, it's the physical proof of an invisible, universe-wide field that gave mass to all matter right after the Big Bang, forcing particles to coalesce into stars, planets etc. Pixels are Machine made and quarks are Life made… Digital art is made by machines and hand-made art by living humans, by their hand. Art should be alive and therefore hand-made art has the potential to be alive to communicate feelings to the viewer through intuitive means. Digital art unfortunately only can communicate cerebrally, through thinking about an image. It is not alive. It is not capable of transmitting emotions. Technology is fun and useful but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water. Painting will always live and a Van Gogh seen live talks to your soul in a way no digital print will ever be capable of. My series speaks to these issues, both pixels and quarks… We have substituted FOOD FOR THE SOUL with FOOD FOR OUR GUT! The proof is in all the championing done in media and TV of celebrity chefs and 10 page spreads of recipes and people proudly identifying themselves as FOODIES.
Yes cooking is also a creative endeavour and can be done in an artful way, but the end goal is still to satisfy the palette and the gut. Everything in life can be artfully done and everyone can be creative BUT only artist's goals are to uplift the soul, especially since formal religion is slowly decaying. Artists who were once celebrated in these same journals and media are now relegated to business course and wall decorations. Our society has killed the soul by negligence and ignorance and thereby is killing art as well by supporting mickey mouse and pop art. Nothing remotely transcendent is being shown in galleries, unless it is being mocked. We now worship not only money BUT our GUTS and possibly ABS as the proliferation of stuffy gyms takes over from walks in NATURE, where our souls could have been uplifted too. Why is more always better, when it can never be enough?
Economic growth and technological advancement can be good means to accomplish something but when do they become obsessive tools for the power hungry scientists and techies and others. They are but security seeking measures because we humans aren't sure about our place in the cosmos. And the more we have, the more anxious we become because deep down inside we know that is not really not what we are seeking. The more we rely on technology the more disconnected we become from the ecology of the natural world. Yes solar panels are good but in the end are they enough to assuage our feeling of separation from our place in the cosmos. The ecological crisis is also a spiritual crisis. We have veered far away from our womb in our pursuit of power and control and in the end especially with facing a plague we have to realize that we are not in charge here and surrender to the natural order of things and accept our more minor role in the scheme of things than we would like to have. We are stewards of the earth and its master. |
Archives
May 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed
