Exchange of Values

Exchange of Values
acrylic on board 48'X96'

"Structure of Color Perception"

"Structure of Color Perception"
48'X96' acrylic on board

Friday, July 17, 2015

Madre dei Dolori
(Mother of Sorrows)

 “Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t mold.) (So the voices won’t scream.) (So I don’t reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won’t rattle.) (So I don’t weep on the bus.) (So I don’t wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don’t jump at car horns.) (So I don’t jump at cat-calls.) (So I don’t jump a bridge.) (So I don’t twitch.) (So I don’t riot.) (So I don’t slit a strange man’s throat.)”  ― Jeanann Verlee

Obliged.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Somebody said/quoted (maybe Ben Myers or B Hart ?) that "Christianity doesn't provide a theoretical answer to the problem of evil, but particular responses to the experience of suffering."

This 'painting' is one of my particular responses.  

Dan M/O shared this quote today:  "The great challenge is *living* your wounds through instead of *thinking* them through. It is better to cry than to worry... You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds."  Its from Nouwen's, "The Inner Wound of Love." 

I am hoping that its true, that my heart is bigger than my wounds.   

This is only the second time that I used Ajax tar as a medium, its is a small study (36" X 24") for a possible "life" size that I am thinking about making.  The figure (barbed wire and tar) is perhaps refusing/resisting the encompassing whiteness?  Or perhaps becoming subsumed into whiteness?  Or emerging from…who the heck knows, its art?…or is it?  



"Some days, all I know is that the God-man has a fissure in his heart too…I have seen enough death to know that dying isn’t just dying. There are a million ways to die and live.   Jesus has the one.  We have our million."  Theologian Anne Michele Carpenter 

The Lynching, by Claude McKay

His Spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven. 
His father, by the cruelest way of pain, 
Had bidden him to his bosom once again; 
The awful sin remained still unforgiven. 
All night a bright and solitary star 
(Perchance the one that ever guided him, 
Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) 
Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. 
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view 
The ghastly body swaying in the sun 
The women thronged to look, but never a one 
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; 
And little lads, lynchers that were to be, 
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.


Blessings and obliged.