on paradox and myself and art

"never say never" "this statement is false" "to live is to die"

these cliched phrases, as they often do, highlight in a simplified and obvious manner a very real truth about our world. however, it is not in the substance of each particular phrase that I am interested, but rather in some underlying facts that unite them. they are self-reflective, self-defeating, and some would no doubt argue, meaningless. they are basic examples of paradox.

at the root of any attempted understanding of today's world, I believe there is a paradox - a regressive issue that prevents any clear and singular explanation of the countless phenomena that exist in our world. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to contend to this statement. as modern thought developed in the 19th century into the contemporary theory of today, this grappling with paradox has been there. as our understanding of the physical world has increased, it has in turn raised many spiritual and existential questions about what our place is in this world. we can increasingly understand in numbers and formulas, but that is in turn making the internal world of the soul more difficult to comprehend. it is the give and take of every moment and every decision that defines life. in economics it is the inverse relationship of supply and demand. it is risk and reward. it is black and white, it is positive and negative. an interesting thing here is that in order to understand these phenomena, we classify them, often in polar relationships. however, things are rarely so simple. but sometimes they are.  

again, we are faced with paradox. for instance, Darwin's theory of natural selection brought into light humanity's real place in the physical world and illuminated our true history on this earth. knowing our biological past, humanity's "special" place in creation is desperately called into question - the reason the theory faced such strong opposition in its day, and that it continues to face it today. it raises so many questions about our place in the world and our search for inherent meaning in this place. like everything in life, knowledge that can improve our lives in so many ways also comes at a great cost. the cost here, as we understand our world better, is that the individual understanding on a personal and interpersonal level can be put to the side. nuance and complexity can be shed for formulaic and rigid classification. 

today, things are no less complex. simplicity doesn't exist except in the simplicity of saying that it doesn't exist (see?). and things, as they do, are changing. we live in a world of relative immediacy. time today holds different value than it did one hundred years ago, even more drastically a millennium ago. where the telegram and train changed relative time in their respective days, snapchat and Twitter and Boeing have distorted time beyond previous recognition. Facebook has given every single person a soapbox and an audience. Instagram gives artists a whole new (and much larger) audience, a level of reach previously unfathomable. and like everything else in history, there are arguable benefits and falls, some of which will undoubtedly overlap, depending on the beholder. again, we are faced with paradox.

acceptance of the plurality of meaning in the present moment, which has been argued to be a basis of any modern understanding of life, is a true and corporal beast here. there are so many possible meanings and so many people to hold them and so many images and sounds and words and it is all so easily accessible. objective truth is so hard to find in the shitstorm (not to say it's all shit) and for me, this is often a cause of a deep and visceral hopelessness that I confront when looking at and/or trying to understand the world and times in which I live. as more and more signals are broadcast into the air from more and more sources, my vision becomes increasingly blurred, and meaning on any personal, social, philosophical, or spiritual level becomes increasingly difficult to find. the lines between representation and genuine existence are blurred into near-non-existence. the odds of any, much less my own, individual comprehension of human condition for no sake other than its own, which in my opinion is the foundation of all art of lasting worth and makes life worth living, are so stacked that it raises the question - is this search for meaning worth it? even possible?

and it is here that these paintings come into play. they are documents of my search, Windows into an opening in my head where these thoughts churn and turn on top of themselves in every direction. more elliptical and hurricane-like than linear or logical. the paintings are evidence of a search for meaning in a world that I sometimes fear is meaningless. I have only one answer, and it is in no way a real solution. it is to continue searching. 

these paintings are born in paradox. riddled with it. they are an attempt to reconcile depictions of human-kind with abstract depiction of emotion and thought. they are an attempt to reconcile circular energy with linear force. they are both meaningless and full of all possible meaning, when confronted with true human engagement. they are nothing to so many and they are so much to me. they are evidence of a battle between a human and an unfriendly world that cares nothing for him (and yet sometimes it feels like I am actually the center of the universe?). 

and while I could continue to try to give them interesting and introspective sounding labels, what they are to me is essentially meaningless and does not describe their intended function, which is much more ambitious. my intention with these paintings is that they should be questionnaires rather than essayed answers. my intention is that all I have said here is rendered useless by a human's genuine engagement with one of the paintings that raises a set of issues not even touched on in this document. my intention is that they provoke questions, provoke examination of personal emotion - loss, hope, fear, loneliness, excitement, repulsion - anything that anyone who sees these brings to the table. it is all welcomed. in fact, I can only hope that even one person will be sparked to examine themselves and their place in this world in relation to the other 8 billion or however many people with whom we share this third rock from the giant, burning ball of gas that gives us life.

putting these paintings down is my only way of engaging with a world I cannot even begin to understand, and I don't think I'm alone in the paling feeling of existing in such a big (or small) world where so little makes any sense. I truly believe it is not about the answers - it's all about questions. the search is the answer. for me at least...