Darkness or Light

The choice is ours.

In the 3rd month of quarantine George Floyd was killed and the US streets erupted with protests. Unable to get out to march, I stayed in my studio and worked on this painting every day for several weeks.

The George Floyd #BLM protests brought all of that into focus for me. I worked spontaneously and intuitively without a plan or design. This painting expresses in real time, day to day, my feelings about my country, and the choices we have in the direction we can take in our lives. We can choose light, or darkness. We can choose communication, or fear. We can choose protecting our planet, or mining as much as possible out of it for personal profit. We can choose abundance for all, or hoarding, oppression and death.

The painting’s narrative starts at the bottom left, with our earliest human art and inspirations. Symbols and marks like the crosshatches, animals, figures and dots have meaning dating back to the Paleolithic era. The full figured woman reminds me of “Venus of Willendorf,” a 25,000 year old goddess/fertility icon. She embraces a fierce looking God-like tiger: female and male dynamic energies supporting each other.  Moving upward we find ourselves in a natural utopia of animals, plants and waterfalls, with a supernatural figure holding a sun-like beacon in one hand while gesturing benevolently to the Earth, waters, animals, moon and heavens with the other. This being is a caretaker of the natural world.

Moving left to right, top to bottom, we swiftly move from abundant nature, fresh air, and beauty to a night world where guns, industry, pollution, fear, faceless incarcerated people and police, tanks, missiles and grinding machines take over. This is a bleak place where darkness reigns and life is cheap. 

The bottom of this painting is unfinished: spilled paint and pencil marks on unprimed canvas. The future is yet to be written. 

Day and Night  72″ H x 52″ W ~ 3 part oil and assemblage painting/construction 

Day and Night

Gods of earth and food
Gods of steel and blood
God built the Rainbow
To help us bridge the flood.
Gods of nature,
Gods of blight-
We sit in darkness
But pray for light.

Tear gas presidents,
Poems painted on roadways;
Gunshots in the alleys,
Angels in the words we say.
A baby’s first laugh,
A world in disarray:
Every minute is night, 
Every minute is day.

Threatened by all things,
Threatened by Cain-
We break the covenant
Again and again.
Gods of nature, 
Gods of blight.
Gods made from darkness,
Gods made from light.

Our oldest stories tell of
Black and White,
Blindness and Sight,
Might against Right.
We must face the forest to find the light,
All of our fears despite,
To seize the day 
and end this night.

~s.stone 2020