STATEMENT OF THE ARTIST (as a middle-aged man) — Adult Version:
This visceral, textural, rippling, pulsing tondo is the culmination of years of reconciling myself to the deeply flawed society America has become.
If one has spent decades meticulously following politics, economics, cultural shifts, and global war (as this artist has), one ends up witnessing an infinite galaxy of Orwellian swine murderously choking The Green, Gaea, Liberty, the Future, the Life, out of our planet.
That’s our children’s and grandchildren’s future — wiped out.
In painting this piece — mindful of James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, James Baldwin’s life’s work, David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ acclaimed essays — it occurred to this artist that IF we were honest about our country’s historical and spiritual essence, we wouldn’t have a Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, but a Ku Klux Klan Memorial, acknowledging our nation’s white-supremacist, gun-worshiping, “Christian” Dominionist soul. (In this painting, that “KKK Memorial” is depicted sunk to the bottom of the ocean, decaying, as befits such a monument.)
This painting bears witness to what its author has painstakingly observed over decades: that the absence of progressive institutions in a period marked by rising oligarchy and inequality — under a brutal, corporatist establishment (serially racist, endlessly warmongering, bankster-abetting, and democracy-subverting) — has contributed mightily to the rise of modern FASCISM.
The moral and intellectual collapse of the left hasn’t merely given us the Bush/Cheney regime, Donald Trump, Theresa May (U.K.), the Le Pens (France), Netanyahu (Israel), et al. — and brought us to the precipice of a third World War, on a barrage of evidence-free claims — it has also given us melting glaciers, acidifying oceans, Colony Collapse Disorder, and CO2 levels that no credible scientist considers sustainable.
It has given our species and civilization a terminal prognosis, with little chance of survival for any of us, in the long term, let alone the millions of human beings currently in our empire’s crosshairs (Russians, Koreans, Syrians, Venezuelans, Iranians, Yemenis, Somalis, etc.).
These “pigs” — today’s fascists — literally DEVOUR THE WORLD. A child could see it. Millennials, who are not children, see it clearly. “Ecology 101” is for the woke.
Last chance to save the planet, people. No more dawdling. Our final exam is now.
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STATEMENT OF THE ARTIST — Child Version (also fun for adults!):
This painting is about the threat posed to our planet’s ecological systems and most living things by institutionalized racism, apathy, and greed.
Hey, kids!
In this painting, can you find: a golden eagle’s head * at least two elephants * a giant, orange moth * several pigs * a serpent * the KKK Memorial * a Victorian lady looking down on Billie Holiday’s auntie * a moray eel * a gentle dog * a swinging orangutan * a cartoon crab * a deluded spaceman * a purple octopus * a crazy clown * an erupting volcano * a great white shark feasting * an otter pup * a caterpillar devouring a tiny butterfly * a beached beluga * a sated vulture, barely able to keep itself aloft * a screaming/vomiting artist…
