Caterpillar and the Pea
This is a personal story of the love for a dear friend with whom I used to share a room. The painting is set in the moments between waking consciousness, and sleeping, as the boundaries in reality become fluid. The two friends, the caterpillar and the pea, hold each other in the smaller of the two beds in the room as their spirits above unite for the evening.
The caterpillar represents the friend and the pea is myself. The three eggs in the heart of the pea refer to painting, writing, and music
Song of Myself
This is a self-portrait including family, land forms of places which have shaped my life (Colorado, Lake Tahoe, and the Tetons), and appearance of “the caterpillar” as the deer. The red rocks allude to my birthplace but also symbolize what I call my “Three Pillars of Existence” which I seek to uphold when considering small or large life decisions. They are “Happy” “Healthy” and “Free”. The stalagmite in the upper left represents the emergence of the form from the formless, and the continuity inherent in this emergence.
Elephant Spiral
This painting refers to a well-known parable of blind men touching an elephant for the first time, having never seen one. The story goes that the ruler of a region was brought an elephant as a gift. This shrewd ruler (probably with a sense of humor) decides to blindfold servants and have them report what they experience of touching the elephant. So, after they’ve had a minute to touch the elephant while blindfolded, the servants are brought into the court with the ruler, and the blindfolds removed
“So tell me,” says the ruler “what is an Elephant?” The first servant says “Sire, an elephant is like a curtain…” To which the second servant says, “ No, the elephant is sturdy and round like a tree trunk!” The third remarked “The elephant is bristled like a paintbrush”. And so the blinded servants begin quarreling among themselves, thinking themselves right and the others wrong. In reality, they were all correct in perceiving a part of what was before them- an ear, a leg, or the tip of the tail.
The Buddha draws a line of comparison to scholars and teachers to be like the blind men who may be unaware of the limitations of their perception of truth. My intention for portraying a Fibonacci spiral of elephants stacked is to imply that the “truth” is more complex than just one elephant to perceive, while also implying that there is a governing pattern innate to it.
The “symbols” or markings throughout the painting introduce discussion into the nature of the symbol and its inherent role in perception of all things. Also, the symbols imply that the elephant, itself is a symbol.
Universe- Abstract
This is an experimentation into different paint application methods and is a representation of a gathering of different distinct energetic forms as amorphous gaseous clouds.