Every day I think about my struggle with technology. I rely on my computer for everything it seems these days. I use it to communicate, to create, to write, to edit, to teach, to play... and yet I still struggle against it. Maybe it is just my generation. Maybe connectivity just doesn't come naturally to me. The painting above is titled The Core of the Matter. Obviously it is a stark still life. What is not readily obvious, however, is that many of the 1,200 plus dots that make up the surface of the painting are tiny images (or if you prefer, pixels) related to technology. In a way I see my struggle as being similar to the universal struggle for knowledge and the resulting dissatisfaction. As a curious child, one of my most profound intellectual moments was when I was about ten years old and I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to acquire all human knowledge!
I have always been fascinated with the quest for knowledge and the loss of innocence that is inevitable. That is why I chose to base this painting on the symbol of the apple. In a way, the poem below also springs from this theme.
A MACHINE FOR MAKING GOD
How do I interpret these desires? The I is incidental, the sky blue. Chromatic aberration explains how we fall repeatedly into the crime, refracted and persistently seeking refuge. Stay. Stand. Study understood. Obstinate. Static. Prostrate. Vision restored.
Personal language shatters dualism, appropriately transcending other and self, human and divine. So I am the prism, and every moment is a different condition. Every moment the image changes, every moment simultaneously... and as always at the center is idolatry: no image maker worships the gods--he knows what stuff they're made of.
So, I am the ocean. And I am lit from within. Break the surface. Reflect the universe. The angle is critical. Fall here.
brilliant.
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