Struggles

This painting series is about our many internal struggles,  defining right and wrong, and the subjectivity of good and evil.*

Lincoln v Goat
Lincoln v Goat

*The catalyst for this series came while watching a cowboy movie, no doubt on a weekday afternoon when I should have been working. You know the arc. It concludes when the protagonist chases the villain into the rocky foothills where they start to grapple and slug it out. I thought to my self, “This would be a very different movie if the villain lands a lucky punch. Really? Right and wrong; good and evil is being determined by who wins a fist fight? And, such is war.”

This is not an original insight but as I had been doing a painting series of Angels and Devils, I decided to use them in expressing the subjectivity of moral struggle. Angel versus Devil. Black versus White. But who is Good and who is Bad? Also, instead of the traditional Angels and Devils I had been referencing, I could create my own.

After working on these paintings for some time, I had an epiphany while playing basketball. I loved playing bball. I loved how, for one hour or more, I was “in the moment.” My life existed only there on the court, going head to head with other players–each of us exerting our all to be winners. The epiphany was that, maybe these paintings were not just about good and evil but about the competition of playing basketball on the City courts where we were a mixture of black and white players. Winning is not always about who is better when there are no referees. Right and Wrong are might be settled by any number of inter personal factors. More Moral Ambivalence. “Just keeping it real.”

Later I exhibited the smaller paintings in a group show at an NYU gallery. When the exhibit was over, I went to the gallery and talked to the guard, explaining I was the artist and had come to pick up my paintings. He was a young black man — probably a student working a part time job. He told me that my paintings had generated a lot of discussion. Really? I was intrigued. What was the reaction that people had? Was my moral questioning evident? No. He said, “Everyone assumed I was gay and was making a statement about male homosexuality.” Wow! I was stunned. This had never crossed my mind but when I looked at them there on the wall, I realized it was a realistic interpretation. I was very disappointed that my statement on moral ambivalence was probably lost on most viewers.