I call this new painting, an 18″ by 25″ piece on paper, Worlds of Wonder. It’s a piece filled with color and rhythm and an optimistic outlook. When I say optimistic here, it’s a viewpoint based on focusing on the wonders that surround us everyday, things that we have failed to notice by either dwelling too much on nostalgia for the past or fear and pessimism for the future. Basically, living in the now and seeing it for the miracle that it is.
We often view the past by filtering out all the unpleasant aspects. I have used the example here before of the current Russians who have come to view the era of Joseph Stalin as some sort of golden age in their country’s history despite the death of millions of Russians killed by the man and his policies. Many, many aspects of their lives are infinitely better in the present day yet there is still a nostalgia for a tyranny of the past where all the negative memories from that time have basically pushed to the far recesses of the mind.
And while we take away the negatives as we look back, we tend to add them when looking forward to the future. We fill our minds with countless possibilities for the future, most of them nightmarishly based on our greatest fears. The future is a boogeyman for many of us.
But ultimately the future will probably not be as bad as we fear and the past was probably not as wonderful as we remember. We learn from the past, plan for the future and live in the now.
And that’s what I see in this painting. The crops are planted for the future. The road brings us from the past to this point. And the tree under the golden sky represents us taking it all in at the present time. Balance in the world, balance in time.
Now is the time to make the present as good as we will remember it in the future.
This painting is, of course, part of my new show, Now and Then, that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery in lovely Old Town Alexandria.
Redtree Times 