Pannonica/the Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Ghost/Butterflies and Tidal Waves

Oil on canvas - 24x30

In this piece, I wanted to explore the far reaching nature of causes and effects, and the connections between butterfly flaps and tidal waves.

Within the texture of our lives is the often unacknowledged reality that our actions, and the actions of those connected to us, have far deeper repercussions than we're traditionally raised to understand. For example, raising a child with violence will almost surely incubate an environment of future violent inspired behavior. We like to believe ourselves to be independently defined and autonomously controlled individuals. That we "fly free," with no puppet strings determining our psychosis. However, we are actually defined and dictated by our environments far more than we'd care to admit... Born in manure, it'd be hard to imagine that you wouldn't come out of that experience with some direct effect of being incubated in poop.

Parallel to the idea that the flaps from butterfly wings on one side of the globe creates tidal waves on the other, I wanted to illustrate how either the neglect or support of a child can have lifelong and even multigenerational effects.

Born out of the flesh of the parent... The child in the image is extending out of its parental cocoon, but caught in the same ripples and reaching for the same butterfly as their parent, the two remain inextricably linked.  We humans are not only constructs of the biological makeup of our lineage, but also of the treatments and exposures we are subjected to.

From one comes another...

From the past metamorphoses the new, but from the new lives the past. Are we not an on going chain of existence, with lessons of dysfunction and compassion handed down from one generation to the next? Is our DNA not just thread that is built up by our biology... Prosperity... Stress... Nutrition... Disease...? Is our culture not a quilt woven with all of us?

aWork in Progress, ca - video - 5 minutes 15 seconds

I've been wanting to do a beginning to end video piece on a painting, and this is it. It was a bit of a challenge to fire up the camera while I paint, I don't usually work like that. The only way for me to get it done was to not over think it, so I just did it. I hope it's enjoyed.

The title of the painting in the video is "Samo Picasso," and is oil on canvas. I didn't have any intentions when starting, except for wanting to show how the artist journeys and adventures through art, and how in that journey, a multitude of dimensions can open up. For the quantum physicists out there... I'm trying to interweave the very large and the very small. But more than anything, "I don't know what I'm doing."