Response to Machiavelli Abstract Series
This series of paintings highlights the role that morality does or does not play in our political discourse. While politicians of all flavors are more than willing to throw the "god" word around like that Power is their best friend, are the decisions that they make ultimately morally based or simply politically expedient? Machiavelli proposed in his book, The Prince, that the "ends justify the means;" this series of paintings responds to that premise, offering a truly moral perspective on political issues. The paintings are based in the words of some of history's greatest social and political philosophers, including Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mencius, Meister Eckhart, Baal Shem Tov, the Sufi masters of Islam and many others.
The paintings themselves are reactions to various morally based social comments by these great masters. After reading about these issues, I use both figurative and abstract images to explore them in paint. Broken and slatted wood supports (metaphor, perhaps, for the abysmal state of politics today?) are contrasted with beautiful color, mysterious glyphs and the almost cartoon-like representation of a populace that is strangled by the pretensions and emotional immaturity of its leadership.
Ultimately, the paintings offer a counterpoint to a political system that is, at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, truly Machiavellian where politicians from all political stripes will say and do just about anything to achieve and retain their personal power. What the great masters offer, and what I attempt to express, is a different manner of leadership, one in which the concerns of the people are truly at the fore.
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"A Great Many People" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 54" x 48" "A great many people enjoy a war, provided it is not in their neighborhood and not too bad." - Bertrand Russell "The public opinion which punishes every violent act of the private individual, praises, exalts as the virtue of patriotism, every appropriation of other people's property made with a view of increasing the power of one's own country." - Leo Tolstoy "In the 9th and 10th centuries even killing in war was regarded as a sin requiring expiation. Burchard of Worms, in the 11th century, equated killing in war with ordinary homicide and assigned 7 years of penance. In the Anglo-Saxon penitential of Theodore of Canterbury, a soldier who killed a man in war was obliged to a 40-day fast, even though he may have killed his enemy in the 'ordinary line of duty,' under the obedience of his officer." - Thomas Merton
"All of Us Who are Concerned" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 43" x 38" "All of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must today be keenly aware of how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. But however that may be, and whatever fate may have in store for us, yet we may rest assured that without the tireless efforts of those who are concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole, the lot of mankind would be still worse that in fact it even now is." - Albert Einstein
"If God Does Not Show More Initiative" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 56" x 56" "If God does not show more initiative in leading humans to salvation, then humans will have to take matters into their own two hands." - Nelson Mandela
"So Long as One Retains their Sword" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 62" x 62" "So long as one wants to retain one's sword, one has not attained fearlessness." - Gandhi "Men who fear to make the sacrifice of love will have to fight." - Toyohiko Kagawa
"It is the Sane Ones" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 48" x 48" "It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones who can, without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. No one suspects the sane ones and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons for firing the first shot. And because of their sanity, they will have no reservations whatsoever." - Thomas Merton "Are we so psychologically constituted and determined that we find real comfort in a daily score of bombed bridges and burned villages, forgetting that the price of our psychological security is the burned flesh of women and children who have no guilt and no escape from the fury of our weapons?" - Thomas Merton
"Knowledge is Obscured by Desire" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 50" x 80" "Knowledge is obscured by Desire." - Bhagavad-Gita "Be intent on action, not the fruits of action." - Bhagavad-Gita "Few of all those who seek wealth and position fail to give their spouses cause to weep with shame." - Mencius
"No One Can Exist" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 40" x 38" "No one can exist completely without religion. If they get rid of a good one, they will unconsciously exchange it for a bad one. If they are impatient of “myth” in higher religion, they will fabricate a myth of their own, organizing their own crude fantasies into another homemade “system” which pleases them better—perhaps with unfortunate outcomes." - Thomas Merton
"Nothing in the World" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 56" x 74" "Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. True words seem paradoxical." - Lao Tzu "If some people think you to be an important personage, distrust yourself." - Epictetus
"The Absurdity of Sanity" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 42" x 43" "The sanity of the modern man is about as useful to him as the huge bulk and muscles of the dinosaur. If he were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of his absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be the possibility of his survival." - Thomas Merton
"The Good Person's Anxiety" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 54" x 70" "The good man does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs." - Confucius
"The World is a Closed Door" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 77" x 53" "The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. At the same time, it is the only way through." - Simone Weil "The path into the light seems dark, the path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long, true power seems weak, true purity seems tarnished, true steadfastness seems changeable, true clarity seems obscure, the greatest art seems unsophisticated, the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish. The Tao is nowhere to be found, Yet it nourishes and completes all things." - Lao Tzu
"Time" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 46" x 58" "Time, the inflexible judge, is ready to pass an irrevocable sentence." - Felix Varela "Time, which is our one misery, is the very touch of God's hand. It is the abdication by which God lets us exist. God waits like a beggar who stands motionless and silent before someone who will perhaps give Him a piece of bread. Time is this waiting." - Simone Weil
"War is an Institution" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 43" x 38"
"With Amazing Effrontery" Year: 2003 Media: mixed media on wood and canvas Size: 40" x 67" "With amazing effrontery, all governments have always declared, and still go on declaring, that all the preparations for war, and even the wars themselves, are necessary to preserve peace." - Leo Tolstoy