Evidence

The Breadth of Human Nature

"Ode to Anne Frank" showed up in my high school freshman art class a few years after I read her diary. Her experience had haunted me, spawning nightmares and claustrophobic fear, until this painting surfaced in a stream of my consciousness onto a masonite board. A few years ago, I found it in the basement. Its burnt umber, sienna and antique white oil colors were cracked and peeling, but the positions of mother and daughter remained. Oil pastels revived them, and although their facial expressions and garb changed, their spirit did not.

In Manhattan to attend art school, I encountered homeless people, which shocked my sheltered innocence, horrifying me until they appeared on my paper and canvas, helping me to live with this new awful knowledge. Back then, nothing suggested that I would become an activist to help raise awareness of every family's vulnerability to homelessness through sudden poverty or other disability. To the fact of hopelessness that imprisons spiritual freedom.

My friends Milton and Anne Rogovin introduced me to Kathe Kollwitz through her art, journals and correspondence soon after we met in 2001. "Ode to Kathe Kollwitz" was inspired by her activism against Hitler, war and poverty. And Anne and Milton inspired me, we three literally still marching for justice, for the peace that justice births in the name of human and civil rights.

The film "Sometimes in April" began with the Rwandan president's plane being shot out of the sky. The horrors exposed in that film launched the oil pastel, "Genocide: Rwanda 1994." This work ignited heated controversy when viewed at an open portfolio session with gallery owners and museum curators. Even one of the artists agreed with them that, not being black, I had no right to paint them or their history. Happily, my friends of many colors know that genocide crosses every line. And none of us can deny the catastrophic consequences of hate-spawned greed everywhere. Witness the president sworn in January 20, 2017.

"Cardinal Rules" and "Out of Nowhere" speak of other bestial acts perpetrated by elements of human nature. Like the nature of the aberration now occupying the oval office. Civility itself is breaking down faster in 2017 since the new president sanctioned hate and surrounded himself with fellow profiteers and dictators.

The oil painting “Living Hell” is as pertinent today as it was in 2001. Today, most citizens of most nations are aware of world events as they unfold on ever developing electronic media. The truth is spun so many ways, and money blinds so many to the spiritual connection we have to the universal originator of creation. The One who created The Golden Rule, treat others as you want to be treated. Respect for life is the guiding light for too few people in power. Until Barack Hussein Obama became leader of the free world. March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the healthcare reform bill into law: A Giant Step for Mankind. April 8, 2010, Pres. Obama persuaded the old USSR into signing a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. What a difference seven years makes -- greed is a powerful enemy, encouraging hate and fear, an enemy we the people have yet to beat. Which is why The Golden Rule has never been more crucial to survival of all life on earth. Never more threatened than now – even right here in America.
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images 1 to 3 of 26
  Evidence 123