DomeRock-SoulTemple (the Awakening)

"DomeRock-SoulTemple (The Awakening)" 2011   Oil on canvas, 36" x 36"

This is the most ardently symbolic painting I have done to date.  A narrative depiction of the "Temple Domini" or Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem under threat of destruction by forces greater than itself, a metaphorical parable which grew out of the crushing emotions I felt after the devastating events of March 11, 2011 at Fukushima Prefecture, on the island of Japan.  Deliberate reference is made to those "destruction events" in their terrible triadic succession:  earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown--by the empty kimono that floats into frame at top left of the canvas.

If the temple itself symbolically enshrines the "Foundation Stone" of our roots in ancient cultures (Islamic, Christian and Hebrew) and their corollary moral codes, the Dome of the Rock claims the singular distinction of the penultimate architecture, rivaled only by Mecca, as the Holiest Place on Earth--the Alpha and Omega of human civilization, the place where Armageddon is to unfold according to the prophets.  It is not without significance that this temple and the Temple Mount on which it stands, steps away from the Wailing Wall, is under constant armed guard by Muslim caretakers and that Jews and non-Muslims currently have restricted access to it.  (Neither is it without significance that this temple is depicted on the reverse of the Iranian 1000 rial banknote).

Hostile parties have bitterly fought over ownership of this monument with the gilded dome for successive generations.  While the painting employs as metaphor the old apocryphal vision of Armageddon, it also evokes the reality of contemporary crises:  the surging seas brought on by global warming, the race for energy and power at the cost of planetary degradation and an ever rising tide of blood (the blood of martyrs) from ceaseless wars and regional conflicts, in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.

In this painting I tried to imagine not only the destruction of the temple but to simultaneously celebrate its demise:  to envision the end of institutions that have outlived their usefulness to humanity and continue to impede the evolution of human consciousness.  "SoulTemple" alludes to that spiritual dwelling of the future, where all souls co-mingle and converge, that have peered into the many mirrored apertures of human history in order to dispel all illusion so that a new temple of human construction can be realized, transcendent and indestructible.

Notes on Hands Holding Pear Slices

The painting came to me while in motion at the kitchen sink.  I saw that stark juxtaposition--a pristine contrast, between the materiality--the manmade slickness of machined sink and its appointments, the ominous drain--the dispose-all--with the foregrounded human hands holding the pear slices and the knife that has prepared the fruit for eating.

Hands Holding Pear Slices

Adam (In the Garden) oil on canvas 2011

(revised from a journal entry about this painting, dated March 7, 2011)
I asked myself...who is that god-like man crowned in palm fronds?  Jesus Christ maybe?  Whoever it was, it was intimidating!  I'm not Michelangelo!  A whole cast of others before me have mastered the male form already--and why was it male in the first place? (no internal answer to that question satisfied!).  I decided to abandon this inquiry and just paint in the sky area of the image to find direction. I broadened strokes and narrowed others, keeping the backlit "realm of glory" as splendorous as I could. I increased the perception of distance, of landscape, of mist over water, adding textures and plant forms--all in the "scene" of the figure, gradually evoking enough sui generis "place in time" until it looked to me like the beginning of the World.  It looked to be a spiritual Eden, our Judeo-Christian paradise, radically bifurcated by the tree and foregrounded figure-- dazzling in its organic form, made in God's image, the creation who rents this world apart in catastrophic brilliance!  It's the Creation story I was taught as a child.  But where is Eve then? I pondered this question for awhile.  Aha, I know-- she's facing the brilliant distance, directly behind her male counterpart!  She faces the Light and the Birth of Creation, the unseen Wo-man who remains mysterious.
What struck me too about the figure's pose was that it had haunted me from a much earlier effort. I'd cast it aside as "not good".  I didn't know what to do with it.  It sat abandoned in my studio for over a year or longer.  But now the figure and the pose took on new meaning.  Finally I rendered the figure to the point where I had to decide the degree of detail to give the genitals,  and had the trouble of emphasis to sexuality. I decided that there could be no fig leaf, no concealment of sex--no shame at a time envisioned as predating the Fall.  No, what the pose of the figure revealed to me then, in it's profound 'stretch of nonchalance' was the inherent hubris of mankind-- the man who would be God.  Call it  Adam or Adonis, here he is, shading himself under the sheltering Biblical palm,  already confusing himself for God the Immortal.

Sunflowers in Hand-Built Vase with Sculpture

Oil on canvas, 36"x 24"

I started this canvas when I was in need of consolation.  The sunflowers were so lovely, they lifted my spirit.  They were in a vase I purchased from a former painter turned ceramicist, Caroline Blackburn.  The sculpture has been in the family for many years, by Adolf Odorfer, called "Socrates Mistress" and stands next to a ceramic cup I like to balance on top of a smooth rock I picked up somewhere.  The two "fossils" are from the island of Cozumel, a piece of coral and a calcified sea shell.  These items are arranged on a table that belonged to my mother, with it's green leather top and painted wood rim that I "distressed" years ago by sanding away the painted surface.  All of the objects, therefore, hold particular meaning for me and provided the comfort I was searching for while I painted them.  I dedicated the painting to my brother-in-law, Rollin Pickford, a much more accomplished painter than am I--a watercolorist of national stature but of extreme humility and poetic spirit.  He died a day before this painting was finished, at the ripe old age of 98, and when I heard the news I couldn't add another stroke or even sign it--for reasons that still elude me.

Man in Red Sweater

Man in Red Sweater, oil on canvas--24 x30

This was a fellow I saw and photographed at our local Starbucks.  Quite handsome I thought and a worthy subject for a painting.  I liked his color coordination of sweater with eyeglasses.  The painting took me only several days.

Rollin's Clay Figures 22" x 28" Oil on canvas