SEPARATION AND NIHILISM Print

“Separation and Nihilism” “happened” as I was packing to move out of our sold building that housed our studio/gallery for many years. I wanted to use this recently acquired statue of St. Joseph and Baby Jesus for a conceptual work, taking it to my home studio to ponder it. I had a direct relationship to this statue as I love religious icons especially more vintage pieces. At home I have an altar with many Virgin Mary and Jesus statues gathered over the years. I did a copy of a very old painting my parents had of the Temptation of St. Jerome and was happy to discover Jerome, Arizona on a cross country drive where I found and purchased the biggest Jesus and Mary statues up to the time I found St. Joseph who was over life-sized!! I couldn’t wait to get started with a conceptual work, but had no idea what to do. As I packed it up I had left the room for a moment and when I returned I immediately saw what it was… and that was the odd juxtaposition of this mundane and very modern detritus of styrofoam packing in contrast and relationship to the lovely statue it was supposed to protect. ..that was enough to get me started on a year-long process of conceptualizing. Separated by the ugly, earth polluting plastic concoction of the chemical mess, styrofoam was the Divine Child from the Father! What does this say? It was a powerful image to me. It was as if I were dreaming it! Unaware then, I had no concept of what was to come into our public life in 2016, but as the year 2017 progressed this conceptual statement has concretized in a way that makes me uncomfortable because of the truth that it conveys; but it continues to guide me into it’s meaning. Not that the concretization of the image (alchemical coagulatio) is only a part of our present day consciousness, as it is an archetypal image, but the outward acceptance of what was once considered unacceptable seems to be something “coming to a head” presently. The masculine has become so completely separated from Divine and Spirit that would otherwise keep it in balance that what we have now is a nihilistic political world where the masculine principle has been separated from that which gave it soul…the divine spirit. It has given rise to a darker side showing it’s face…blatant misogyny, lying, racism, greed and worse are acceptable parts of our public life. The masculine principle has become so unbalanced that even those who we thought might preserve of our democracy, our decency have become so corrupt as to remain silent in the face of this divisive and destructive element. However what did it give rise to? The Women’s March!!! The Women’s March isn’t just females…it is all people who embrace the feminine principle of relationship, nurturing, protecting…This is the war that we now face at home while in other places North and South speak to each other in the world of Olympians… while our own so-called leaders snub the idea as they hold up the facade of patriotism.. a masking dark intentions….only occurring to me while writing my thoughts days after the beautiful first day of the Olympics a symbol of the embracing feminine where people of all colors and from all countries attend the games and compete hopefully with honesty and integrity a proper symbol for goodness as opposed to the shadow of “Separation and Nihilism” here at home. I decided to sell the imagery as a photograph since the installation, itself, is unmanageable, like our politics today.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.