Recent Paintings
The creature in this painting is a recurring character in my work. He/She is the anthropomorphic History of God. The three heads are all meso-american, seven arms on one side, thirteen total, 3, 7, and 13 all sacred numbers. The arms are birds and snakes, prevalent in all mythologies. The hind feet are Poseidon’s horses, signifying that school of thought and myth, the front legs are goat’s hooves, a prevelant creature in religion and sacrifice. The creature’s tail is a Chinese dragon’s, representing that collection of religions and philosophies. The creature is both male and female, as God has been both sexes throughout our history and is also a therianthrope, a hybrid man/animal, a common representation of a shaman’s initiation and transformation. Lastly, the observed and known universe is located within the creature’s body as mankind’s perception of the stars and what lay beyond them has been intertwined with our perception of God.
The bindu of the painting is located behind the creature’s heart. From that center point radiating outwards in concentric circles, from most basic to ever more complex, are numerical systems of various cultures, the symbols for the elements, simple mathematical equations, then equations from higher maths, and finally equations from quantum mechanics. The shapes in the painting are Calabi-Yau manifolds, the six-dimensional shapes that are wound up on every point and what the strings in M Theory vibrate through to achieve the proper resonance to create our tangible reality. The fiddle heads are the tuning mechanisms by which science adjusts the strings, searching desperately for the one glorious harmony that brings it all together.
The History of God is separated from all of this by a thin film, conceptually setting him apart from the background. Both He/She and the scientific tuning strings describe reality, the first in allegories and metaphors and the second by signs and symbols. However very similar in what they try and find, they are essentially different entities certainly able to coexist side by side.