Love Is Still The Answer

Love Is Still The Answer

The relevancy of the timeline of this piece begun at the end of 2019, became an important factor for me. With never an advanced plan, I rely on my intuition and solitude that inform my ideas for images. The first image I painted started with a conversation that turned into an epiphany for me.

These kind of circumstances are exactly what works for me to begin my quest and I found a perfect photograph taken by Andrew Prokos of the spectacular sculpture that sits above the entry to Grand Central Station in NYC. I painted the likeness of the god Mercury, also known as Hermes, representing the fleet-footed messenger of the gods, god of all the ARTS, and protector. The entire sculpture includes Hercules, god of strength and Minerva, goddess of wisdom and was a 7 year project. In the context of our present day chaos, it now seems like an edict I was given.

The jaguar, focused, ready yet quenching its thirst is an appropriate metaphor now. Several images that remind me of the always present Golden Mean in nature, anatomy, music, architecture, spirals and predictability are everywhere including the hexagonal grid of the wax cells of honeycomb, the drawing of the stained glass window of Notre Dame, the logarithmic spiral of the seashell, placement of the petals of flowers, the pinecone with its spirals and symbolic of our pineal gland, also known as the God gland, these are some of the images that ‘somehow’ grab my attention and have to be painted.

Some images that capture my imagination are from phenomenal illustrators and photographers who give their permission for me to paint my version of them into my pieces for which I’m so grateful. Early on in this painting came the octopus as a headdress for the woman which I decided had to be my ‘self portrait’. Redmer Hoeckstra is the original spectacular illustrator. Ed Binkley is another gifted artist and I loved painting a this green mischievous fruit fly atop a peeling apple. So much joy that gave to me.

Jord Hammond is a phenom also and two of his photographs stunned me by their brilliance and how I could amend the surroundings to work into my piece. His night sky that is literally exploding out of a person’s heart, and his bridge in China are a couple that he gave permission for me to paint.

After painting the bridge twice as long and I couldn’t figure out where it

should end up, I decided to paint this microscopic human shin bone photo which reminds me so much of the miraculous human body we inhabit as well as Gaudi architecture in Barcelona. And another big thank you to Ben Phlliips whose faerie Murville seems to stand perplexed next to an unidentifiable beautiful mess, giving it some degree of acceptability which up until I had heard back from Mr. Phillips, I was also baffled!

During my painting process, I curate playlists along with audiobooks and the song that took prominence was from one of my all time favorite singer/ songwriters, Jason Mraz and it’s more pertinent to me now than ever: Love Is Still The Answer. Thanks Jason! We love you!

And so it goes.