In my art over the last couple of years, I've tried to find my way in abstraction, towards parallel imagery to convey the basic building blocks of a living seething mass, the basic materials that structure the body of any living thing and that animate it. In the end, my best fruit were tendrils which were colorful strands of "metamaterial" that emerge from orbs, spherical orbs and are the visual representation of the impetus to become. Just like an embryo develops or like a seed sprouts and always sends forth a runner, tendrils are the visual representation of the desire to live. They represent a tendency that unites us all. Ironically, only about 15% of the population of the US go to art galleries and only a fraction of them would respond to this imagery, so it's the nature of the institution of art to divide culture by creating exclusive groups. Ideological groups are the same way. They're greatest dream is unity, but they must create enemies to know who belongs. By the nature of adherence to an idea, one divorces oneself from other ideas.
And so it goes with sports, movies, types of food, etc. However, eating, sleeping, falling in love, birth and death, lust, etc. are things we have in common. Our animal natures are what unites us ironically, our primitive bonds are our greatest tools for peace. Wherever cultural refinement has developed it has created the opportunity for opposition, conflict, exclusivity and the like. So this is why I've spent time painting what amounts to biologically inspired abstraction. But now inclusivity is less important to me, because life itself has become less precious.
There's a painting I'm working on now that involves counting people. Hundreds of thousands of people and the project is massive. As I count thousand after thousand I find it more and more difficult to make an accurate count and more and more acceptable to count people twice or to not count people at all. Quantification unites us. Ideological groups in the quantities divide us.
