"Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality)" a Winner!

Hey guys, I'm very pleased to announce that my acrylic painting Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality) was Second-Place Winner in the two-dimensional art category of the Walter Lee Avery Gallery 2021 Fall Adult Competition.

I received the award from the Mayor of the City of Seaside, Ian Oglesby, and Seaside Art Commissioner, Sandra Gray, in Seaside City Hall's Council Chambers this past Friday, October 8th at well-attended reception.

I'm grateful to the Seaside Art Commission, Francoise Avery, Sandra Gray and her crew for their outstanding curating of the exhibit and organizing the reception.

Black Lives Matter: Justice for George Floyd

This is a 5x7 portrait in watercolor of a human being. His name is George Floyd.

Since I was fifteen (now sixty-six years older) I've dedicated my entire creative life towards social justice. I haven't always succeeded. Every portrait I've ever painted has in some way big or small touched on social justice.

As I've stated in earlier posts, I'm in the process of painting portraits of authors I'm reading as I write my own memoir. But those can wait.

Showing that I recognize that a beautiful life had his breath extinguished, and that injustice has stood for too long -- that can't wait. Black lives matter, and I stand in solidarity.

I'm waiving my copyright on this image so that anyone who would like to have it on posters, flyers and literature to use in activities of social justice may do so. I only ask that when possible to credit this artist. Thank you.

#georgefloyd #blacklivesmatter #blm

Belle Foundation Grant

With gratitude I'm extremely pleased to announce that I'm the recipient of a 2019 Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

"You have been chosen for this award as an artist who is genuinely committed to his work, and as someone who demonstrates significant potential for continued growth and accomplishment.

"The Individual Grants Program of the Belle Foundation was designed to recognize people like you, who exhibit exceptional talent and potential for achievement in the arts and humanities."

Again, my appreciation to Allysa Byrkit and the Board of Directors of the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

KRONOS is home

After five-and-a-half months at The Dalí Expo (now History & Art Museum: Salvador Dalí), this past Monday, Karen and I brought KRONOS back home.

KRONOS was the interactive art installation envisioned by my wife and creative partner, Karen Warwick (warwickartandbooks.com), which we had constructed jointly over several months for her month-long solo exhibition at The Dalí Expo during August 2019.

Visitors from around the world posted many positive comments regarding the KRONOS exhibit. We’re grateful to the management of The Dalí Expo, who liked it well enough to make the decision to relocate it to in their lobby bookstore and keep it on display and freely open to the public another four months past the closing of Karen’s solo.

Public interactive participation garnered uniformly positive responses. Often visitors stood in line with their kids waiting to give it a spin.

We did not originally envision during our construction of KRONOS that it would be on daily display for so long, subject to interaction by the public. However, it stood up to the daily pounding to our delight and surprise.

We are now seeking grants to upgrade the KRONOS installation or rebirth it in more robust forms in other art venues.

Portrait of Konrad Heiden and the Threat of American Fascism

I think of myself as a “cultural subversive” artist. My hope and expectation is to contribute through my art and writing to changing the culture of inequality embodied in the patriarchal paradigm. Until late 2018 my personal style had been ironic but low-key, not prone to bold statements. I realize now that subtle and sublime may not be enough.

Two of my pastel paintings, Portrait of Konrad Heiden and Pretty in Pink, mark my departure from subtlety. The 2016 election of a con man and misogynist boor to the U.S. presidency was, I perceived, a political threat to democracy here and around the world. It was the stimulus for my departure from subtle.

Now more than ever, it’s apropos to provide some background to Portrait of Konrad Heiden, even more so in the context of last week’s historic impeachment of the would-be dictator.

Who was Konrad Heiden?

My ostensible subject was a German-American journalist and historian. He witnessed and documented first hand in the 1920s and 30s the rise in Germany of the charismatic if brutish Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. (I say “ostensible” subject; but the true subject of the best artwork is a dialogue between the mind of the artist and that of the viewer.)

Konrad Heiden documented how the cynical pragmatism of bankers, military and civic leaders sought to use Hitler and his army of street thugs in uniform, but contain him -- and how this backfired upon the world.

In the wake of the bloody consolidation of Nazi power in 1933, Heiden fled into exile to various hideouts in Germany, Switzerland and France. He was captured and imprisoned briefly, but managed to escape to the United States with the aid of the International Rescue Committee.

In 1944, Heiden published the epic biography Der Fuhrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, a book I first read in 1971 as a teen art student attending the LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts in New York City. Sadly, Heiden’s work is even more relevant today.

The Portrait of Konrad Heiden

This painting is dominantly dark monochrome pastel and pastel pencil, except for the spare use of color in the partial face  of Heiden, who looks directly at the viewer. An enraged if cartoonish demagogue harangues a Congressional audience presided over by an applauding Vice President and Speaker of the House, a reference to Trump’s joint address to Congress in 2017.

The section below it was adapted from a historical photograph of Adolph Hitler addressing the German parliament or Reichstag in 1933, its members uniformly acknowledging him with the Nazi salute.

What does my painting have to do with Congressional matters, and what am I attempting to address? Fascism, moral cowardice, hypocrisy, short-sighted opportunism, in a few words. These words apply not only in the repugnant remnants of the Republican Party members of Congress who have forsaken any semblance of belief in Constitutional law, but sadly also in the existence of a so-called “base” of die-hard Trump supporters who have lost their sense of moral compass.

Fascism in America 

Although the vulgar antics of Donald Trump gives high-profile encouragement to proto-fascist movements in this country and elsewhere, I must emphasize that the tragedy lies not so much in Trump himself. No, the actual tragic and frightening parallels are between the ordinary citizens of Germany who explicitly or tacitly supported Hitler in the 20s and 30s, and the legislators and ordinary citizens who continue to support Donald Trump and his administration today.

Trump is not the problem, but the ultimate putrescent symptom of the problems initiated by corporate greed and the fraud of so-called “trickle down” economics perpetrated over decades now.

For over forty years the American people have been stressed economically and socially like frogs simmering in a pot -- and continue to be stressed in ways analogous to the German people stressed by the horrors of World War I and the aftereffects of the Versailles Treaty reparations policies. While individual historical details differ, the common threads between the two historical periods are fear and the debasement of moral conscience – great masses of the population in fear for their precarious livelihoods and communities due to imbalance in the concentration of wealth, and demagogues who play upon those fears and scapegoat an “Other” as the source of what people fear. In Germany, the "Other" was Jews, communists, Slavs, homosexuals, the mentally disabled… Today, the "Other" are immigrants, foreigners of skin colors other than white, persons of differing gender orientations and increasingly, simply those who have differing views on what it means to be equal.

In 2016 I witnessed this – and as an immigrant and person of color expressed my horror of it – when a Trump campaign rally spit in the face of the face of a Latino man, and no one there – surely not Trump – spoke out against it in the name of decency. Moral obscenities have only piled on since the election within government and outside of it.

We are closer now to fascism in America than ever before – authoritarian misuse of government, an economy of massive inequality, armed extremists emboldened by the sanction of presidential indecency and ordinary citizens having legitimate anger at their displacement channeled into support of an orange-headed walking colostomy bag of lies.

While in the history of the United States there have been fascist movements and fascist sympathizers before in low and high places, they did not have the military-industrial-information complex technology and mass social media resources that exists today. Now as then, cynical pragmatism in the halls of industry, government and religion believe Trumpism can be controlled and used to ends they believe benefit them, the ends justifying the means.

With a Republican-dominated Senate that acts in lockstep with Trump’s administration, the system of executive-legislative-judicial checks-and-balances is failing in ways that could not be imagined by the founding fathers as they first conceived that component of a constitutional democracy.

At the risk of belaboring the point, Trump is not the problem but the uglified symptom of the long-festering systemic problem of patriarchal inequality that is the parent of inequalities. Yes -- he must be removed from office immediately lest the United States as a constitutional democracy goes down, taking the world with it; but if Trump were simply to disappear from politics today, the forces that created Trump, the spineless politicians and the populace who believed in him would still exist. Fear, hatred and the socio-economic environment in which these breed still exist. That’s my challenge as a creative. That’s our challenge in the period ahead.

Heiden’s Der Fuhrer ends in 1934 with Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, followed by the contrived burning of the German parliament – the Reichstag Fire – which Hitler and his administration used to murder his opposition in the Night of the Long Knives and impose blood-drenched rule on Germany. America itself has acquiesced to fear of the Other before: witness the incarceration of Japanese-Americans at the outbreak of World War II and the Patriot Act after 9/11. The rest is history.

The Shape Of Things To Come

With Portrait of Konrad Heiden (and its companion piece Pretty In Pink) I want to invoke a remembrance of the past with the hopes that we as a nation “are not condemned to repeat it”, in the words of the philosopher and poet George Santayana. Yes, I would have preferred to convey my thoughts in subtle visual metaphor; but we live in unsubtle times. 2019 has been for me a year of struggling with personal changes. When the spirit and conscience move me, my ironic images will be more iron-fisted in their delivery in 2020 going forward.

Escaping the Insanity of Things or How To Find Serenity In Moving Experiences

The house in Seaside, California had been my mother’s home for three decades – and for more than the past twelve years my permanent residence and artist studio. I had vowed that while my elderly mother was still alive, it would never be sold nor lien placed upon it ; but now, Ma is gone.

Karen, my fiancée, is also an artist, and at the start of this year 2019 I moved from Seaside to the nearby town in which she lived, to start a new life with her as a full-time artist and writer. Two months prior to that, I quit my day job – hopefully done with day jobs forever.

The forty-five-year-old house in Seaside was in a state of disrepair, but I didn’t have the financial means to upgrade it. Much of its more than sixteen hundred square feet was dirty and filled with clutter. We met with a realtor to discuss a rapid sale of the Seaside house -- “as is”. With a speed that left us breathless, three weeks later we closed escrow.

In those three weeks, we sold, donated or moved to storage a number of items from the thirty years of accumulated THINGS. In the final week, movers came and hauled away tons of old furniture. Yet, closing day had finally come, and even with all furniture gone, sixteen hundred square feet was still littered with boxes, thousands of books and bags of trash -- tons of THINGS that physically could not be moved into Karen’s -- a house less than half the size.

The buyer had agreed to postpone closing for a week. That week at the end of March had come and gone, and he would budge no further. Midnight was the rock bottom deadline to be off the property that was no longer mine, a property that was to be empty – totally empty -- of all my THINGS.

After a night filled with fitful sleep and chaotic dreams, early that morning I sat with Karen at her kitchen table. “You can’t argue with the physics of space and time,” I said. There were too many things – too many to bring to our small home, too much to put in our limited storage rental, no time left to sort, pack and move it all. We were overwhelmed with THINGS.

A huge portion of those things would have to be trashed. How did this feel? It would be the equivalent of taking possessions – thousands of books, objects that had belonged to my parents and me and accumulated over thirty years – dumping them in the back yard, pouring gasoline over them and setting them on fire. If we were to pull off this caper by midnight, that is what I resolved to do. 

I’ll deviate now from my narrative to speak of what this writing is really about.

I want to speak on the subject of things: Attachment to THINGS, the memories they represent, grief that comes with loss, whether the loss be of loved ones, relationships, jobs or money, but specifically on the loss of THINGS to which we’ve become attached.

The bank account into which the money from the sale was to be deposited didn’t even exist until two days prior to closing. For the purpose of this writing, I can’t go into the complexities involved into why this was so, but even the money from the sale was a THING to be reckoned with.

What should have been our delight at our newfound income was marred by anxiety. We were anxious that our inability to fulfill the buyer’s demand that to vacate a totally emptied house would cause the deal to all come apart and come to naught.

The image that came to my mind was of Sisyphus, the arrogant king condemned to forever roll a prodigious rock up a steep mountainside, only to have it repeatedly and forever come crashing back down. To my mind, the attachment THINGS is our rocks; and our obsession with things is our own self-condemnation to roll them.

The world appears full of suffering, yet that suffering is caused by want, by desiring. For far too many in this world, the want is of dire need for the means basic survival, of food and of shelter. For others of privilege, want is simply to have – to have THINGS and to have the means to control THINGS. Somewhere I had heard that in certain cultures desiring more than what one needs is the definition of insanity.

So many of the things my parents and I accumulated over thirty years in fact were no longer needed for any practical purpose. Perhaps many of the items were never needed, either from the baseline standpoint of survival or even comfort. Articles of clothing I hadn’t worn for years; books I was unlikely to read again, if at all; objects purchased in the past that had no relevance to the present day; items that took up space, and could not be transported from a larger space to a space not even half as big.

Why then was it so hard to simply let go of unnecessary THINGS?

For me, and perhaps for many other people, things were not only “things” as objects, but memories – memories of the human interactions and events associated with the things at the point of their acquisition and use, such as at a younger, earlier time in my life or particularly memorable happy times.

How was I to let go? For one thing, by coming to recognize and express gratitude for what I had, instead of what I didn’t have; what I had gained in the quality of my life, and not the objects I was to lose.

I will also speak of my belief in a safe and loving universe. I want to believe -- and choose to believe -- in a universe that wants us all to succeed in the best terms of success; and that if we ask – individually and en masse – our success will be granted in proportion to our expectations that it will. We create our reality. I believe that the only “rule” is that my asking will not be at the expense of or harm to anyone else.

Likely, this belief of mine will be met with disbelief in my naiveté. Surely, a random scan of the daily news filled with examples of greed should disabuse me of that belief, no? Admittedly, my faith is tested often, and often for days and weeks on end.

I offer no proof of my assertion that the universe is loving and safe. I can only present my personal experience where the gods or the universe opened and responded to my need, my committed resolve, hard work and most importantly my positive expectations, manifested in events lined up and people coming through with kindness and good will in my behalf.

In The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, the mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray asserted in a statement often misattributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.”

Be grateful in what you have all around you, and you get what you need. I believe that the truth of this has been borne out for me on a number of occasions.

POSTSCRIPT:

In the days and weeks during and following my move from bigger-to-smaller and more-to-less, and in the context of current political and economic events I reflected on the suffering that results from the lust for things and for the control of things. From this reflection came the inspiration to paint King Sisyphus In the Underworld.

In Memoriam: Bruno "Pete" Peters

In July a great man departed this mortal time and space, and left the company of devoted family and friends. He passed on just eight weeks short of his one-hundred-first birthday. I considered him a dear friend, and during the all-too-brief time I knew him he allowed me the privilege of rendering two portraits his likeness. I would like to honor his memory in this post.

He was Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Peters, U.S. Army Air Corps, (Ret). I met him and his wife Patti in 2004, through their daughter, my friend Mohini Wendy Peters.

Pete and Patti were always warm and welcoming to me from the day I met them in Torrance, California. When I first spoke with Patti and referred to her husband as “Mr. Peters”, she immediately corrected me, “Pete”. Since then I always felt welcome in their presence.

The portraits portray him at stages in his life exactly seventy years apart.

In The Quiet Man (1) I envisioned him as the twenty-seven year old fighter pilot, Captain Bruno Peters, flight leader of 355th Squadron.

In The Quiet Man (2), he’s just Pete as I knew him, still blowing notes on his saxophone. I painted this as a gift for his ninety-seventh birthday.

He flew (and crashed) all kinds of fighter aircraft during World War II, and piloted transport planes during the Korean War.

However, he was most renowned as an aviator with the 354th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force -- the Pioneer Mustangs, the first unit to fly the renowned North American P-51, in both their B and D models.

I was privileged to attend a couple of veterans’ reunions of the 354th. It was obvious that he was held in high regard by everyone, as a pilot and as a man.

Although much has been said and written about his heroism as an aviator – all of it well-deserved -- I was always most impressed by his humility.

During the time I was taking night classes while working full time, I was assigned the writing of an essay and then to speak about its topic before a live audience. My choice of topic then was what’s been referred to as “The Greatest Generation”. This included interviews with Pete regarding his WWII experiences. He was reluctant to make much of them. To him, he was just doing his job. He seemed to have more enjoyment recounting the times he had crashed various of his planes in non-combat situations, than recounting experiences in actual combat.

I loved his saying that “all I ever wanted to do was fly airplanes and play in the band”.

I've excerpted portions of his obituary below:

"...Bruno was born on September 12, 1917 in Minneapolis, MN, to Bernice Dabravalskiai and Alexander Petraitis. Bruno was the oldest of five children. His father and mother emigrated from Lithuania, in 1906 and 1913, respectively. The family settled in the Detroit, Michigan area where Alexander worked for Ford Motor Company. Bruno became an accomplished violin musician at an early age and often performed with his father at Lithuanian celebrations. Bruno left home at the age of 14, and graduated from High School in Royal Oak, Michigan.He joined the Army Air Corp during World War II. He flew more than 100 missions in the P51 Mustang, out of England and France with the Pioneer Mustang Group. Most of his missions involved escorting bombers to and from their targets. He is credited for downing one of the first German jets, the ME262. During the war, he took up the saxophone, which he played for most of his life. After the war he continued his career in the Air Force and retired as Lt. Colonel in 1968.Bruno met and married Patti Helen Ruth Moore (April 29, 1926 – July 29, 2010) on August 22, 1944. Due to his career in the Air Force, the family moved all over the United States, and also lived in France for 3 years. After retiring from the Air Force, Bruno and Patti settled in Phoenix, AZ where he worked for the Gannett Newspaper. During that time, Bruno and Patti enjoyed antiquing together, and acquired hundreds of collectables. Bruno led the Pete Peters Swing Band, playing for special events and for fun. He and Patti enjoyed traveling and went to many reunions of the 354th Fighter Pilot Group.In 1997 they moved to Torrance, California. Shortly after the death of his wife Patti, in 2010, Bruno bought a home in Santa Cruz where he lived with his daughter, Wendy, until his death..."

The photo below is from last September, 2017 when we celebrated him at his 100th birthday.

Photo Courtesy of Ken Peters

The obituary credits him with shooting down an ME262A. However, it's probable that he actually took down a second, an ME262-1, though it was not officially confirmed. His wingman, Lt. Ralph Delgado took down a third -- totaling three ME262s in the area of Fulda and south of Kassel region of central Germany.

There are many books on the exploits of the Pioneer Mustangs, which were the first to fly the P-51D, the bubble canopy Mustang that had the engine power and fuel capacity to escort and defend bombers all the way to the Third Reich’s territory. The acclaimed Redtails of the 332nd Fighter Group -- the Tuskegee Airmen -- were P-51Ds as well.

The most succinct and inexpensive book I'd recommend to the casual reader is An Ordinary Day in 1945, by Peter Kǎǎsák. With photos and illustrations it tells of all the action seen by the 8th and 9th Air Force during one day, March 2, 1945. That was the day that Capt. Peters and his wingman Lt. Delgado took down the ME262s. (Barely six months later, Bruno would marry his beloved Patti.) A Google search on "Bruno Peters" would produce many excerpts on him, and more vintage fighter pilot photos as well. You can see Bruno Peters and hear him speak on a YouTube video from a series on the 354th FG. Even as he speaks of his experiences, his humility and self-deprecating humor are clearly evident.

His memorial was held this July 28th, 2018, which I attended. I spoke of him fondly as I do now, but it was difficult holding it all in. In the early evening, we boarded a whale-watching boat out of Capitola for his burial at sea amidst the dolphins. Mohini’s brother Ken released into the waves an eco-friendly urn in the shape of a sea turtle containing Bruno's ashes and those of his wife Patti. We cast yellow roses in the wake.

There’s much more -- a whole lot more that could be said about him – his quiet valor, kindness and wry humor… It’s certain many will speak of him for some time to come. In closing, though, I’d include in my personal remembrance his big-hearted generosity.

"Father and Children" Watercolor Process Video

Now, more than ever, we need examples and models of sensitive, nurturing good men to contradict the culture of patriarchy. I created a watercolor painting to celebrate kind and aware fathers, and the children they help raise as the hope of our civilization.

This process video was the first that I ever created for Instagram; and the first video I've created in a long time of any kind. 37 seconds of footage literally took me all day to composite. As I get better at it there will be more created, of better quality and appearing faster and more regularly. (Created 4/22/2018) 

Comic Art: Not Just For Your Kids Anymore

Over the past year, besides going back to reading the classics of comic art or discovering new ones, I've been doing research on all aspects of how comic art is actually made. I've been exploring what it might take to parlay my fictional writing (and true life experiences) into a socially aware graphic novel "Extreme Dreams". For those of you who haven't read comic books since childhood, comic art is a serious art form. Graphic novels have won the Pulitzer prize. Doctoral theses have been presented using the graphic novel medium.

Extreme Dreams is about a socially un-aware man with unreliable psychic abilities (which we all have, more or less). He's introverted, surly and harbors many of typically male sexist and homophobic attitudes, if not overtly. Tragic events force him to seek out unlikely allies and re-examine his life in order to unravel their source.

(This is my first attempt at a three-sentence elevator pitch. How am I doing?) At a comic con workshop last year, one piece of advice I received from comic artists Ryan Sook and Alex Sheikman was that even if I primarily wanted to write comic scripts, publishers ultimately want to see visual examples of my concepts, i.e., even if I had to rope other artists into doing that part of the work, we'd still have to be able to present hard copy visual comic art.Problem, though. I've never actually drawn comic art; and as of October 2017, except for a few timid and tepid doodles done on the sly during my day job conference calls, I hadn't done any real ink drawing in seventeen years. Long story behind that one -- involved a woman, as so many stories do. Tell you another time; or maybe not.So, I decided to perform an experiment: during the month of October (roughly), I participated in "Inktober". For those of you who aren't familiar, Inktober is an artistic challenge originated by Jake Parker eight years ago in which thousands of creatives around the world now participate. Thirty-one days in October, in which to make thirty-one pieces of art using only ink. There are "official" prompts one can use; or one can just wing it. Hey, we're artists -- we don't follow no stinkin' rules.I began to post drawings on my Instagram, with the intention of completing thirty-one ink drawings – with the added commitment to make them in a comic art “style”.Now into the second week of November, I've just completed "Day 31". Life -- which “happens when you're busy making other plans” -- intervened many times, plus realizing that not all of these drawings could be done as quick-and-dirty as I thought they could be. Once I actually began to post drawings, it just didn't feel like part of my commitment to simply submit a five-minute doodle; so, I lost a lot of sleep around this, and dishes piled up unwashed in the sink for days at a time. (Well, OK, some truth-telling here: I'm living a bachelor's existence. The dishes pile up, inktober or no.)Thirty drawings constitute a kind of storyboard for what may eventually evolve into a graphic novel. I say "might", because as any of you who actually have more experience in doing comic art know, it's a hellofalot of work to research, write, compose, pencil draw line art, ink, color and letter comic art -- not to even mention publishing and maybe, just maybe, make money off them.Maybe when I retire from my day job in two year? Six years? Maybe I can't/don't want to do it all by myself, and instead find collaborators? Maybe crowd fund a graphic novel? Who the hell knows what may come of it, if anything. If you get a winning lottery ticket, keep me in mind, please.For me the point of Inktober was to finally get started doing something -- anything -- with ink and with comic art. 

Though I want all of my artwork generally to express social awareness -- and I believe my new comic art falls within that criteria -- not all of it necessarily fit in the context of this website. I'll post it here whenever it does. (One of these -- #20 in the Instagram posts, but which I've since titled Time Traveler) is actually hanging in the Walter Lee Avery Gallery now through December 13, 2017 as part of the Fall Adult Competitive exhibition.) For the moment you'll need to go to my Instagram.com/emcorpus to see the entire series. They're in the order of most recent to older posts; so you'll have to work your way back to #1 and go forward.Remember, I'm totally new to this; so please be kind (if you can manage being kind -- but if not, I can take it, being a Boomer and now having entered the ranks of the old guys. Old guys rule.)I'll have more to say about these subjects; but I also invite your comments and discussion.

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Why My Art Is ‘Subversive’ -- and How That Matters to You

In recent times, I’ve chosen to characterize my visual and literary practice as “culturally subversive art”.Merriam-Webster defines subversion as “a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system.” To subvert is “to overturn or overthrow from the foundation, ruin, by persons working secretly from within”. Ooh! Or, how about this? “…to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith”. 

Merriam-Webster defines subversion as “a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system.” To subvert is “to overturn or overthrow from the foundation, ruin, by persons working secretly from within”...“…to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith” 

This word carries something of an emotional charge. Sounds dangerously anti-social and unwholesome, doesn’t it? Maybe even criminal.“Why do you call your artwork ‘subversive’?” I’ve been asked, often with dubious looks of dismay, or uneasy amusement.I’ve set for myself an ambitious task in my own modest way of ambition -- to overthrow, undermine, overturn, ruin, pervert, corrupt and undermine a centuries-old social paradigm, and the attitudes, beliefs and social practices that attend to it. 

So, what’s this social paradigm on which I’ve tilted my lance point?Its current model is what sociologist and historian Riane Eisler calls the dominator society, as opposed to a partnership society.*It’s a patriarchal society where attitudes and practices of domination, control and winning at any and all costs pre-dominate.Does this sound familiar to you? It’s a paradigm where violence – overwhelmingly male violence -- is implicit, passed forward from generation to generation as a socially sanctioned blood curse.Let me make this dominator society more concrete for you, if it isn’t already: inequality in socio-economic, ethnic, gender, age and racial forms, bullying in our schools, campus rape, physical and emotional abuse in our families…So, this is a clue for you.While running a thread of subversion through my artworks, I try to avoid being didactic and preachy. My intention is to create art with a social conscience, not propaganda. Notwithstanding Master Yoda on “trying” versus “do or not do”, I have no illusion that I’ll always succeed.

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Illustration by Gustave Doré of Don Quixote Tilting At WindmillsCervantes, Miguel. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

Neither do I think that every piece I create needs to be grim with the weight of its perceived mission of cultural revolution. There’s much in our world over which to feel angry and despondent. Feeling angry all the time, however, or being around angry people all the time, gets tiresome.In fact, whimsy and humor is often the best way to point out the absurd and ridiculous ways that attitudes of “win” “dominate” and “conquer” at any cost often manifest in everyday life and popular culture, from sports to entertainment to business to sexual relationships.Sometimes, I just like being contrary to convention. It can be fun (though I run the risk of indulging my darker passive-aggressive side with this.) 

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As an Asian-American male now almost four years into the sixth decade of my life (all of which presents their own sets of challenges), I continue to subvert the remnants of my own attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, prejudices and social practices as I determine these are no longer congruent to leading a life with deep, intimate, more fulfilling relationships. Shaking or even kicking over the shit bucket is one of the best ways to shake myself up.I’d much rather laugh at myself than beat myself up, though. There was too much of the latter in my life, literally. It would be cool if I could get you laughing, too. Maybe you might find some of my art funny.

Admittedly, as with political and military subversion, there are risks, costs and penalties to being a cultural subversive – even meeting with violence at one extreme, but often also condemnation to social isolation and ostracism.I’m of the opinion that much of what has become the popular image of the “insane” artist derives from creative individuals being driven to insanity by isolation for being “different”. (Be-on-the-lookout for a blog post – or rant – from me on this topic.) No wonder Merriam-Webster states that subversion is done “by persons working secretly from within”.Let me conclude by introducing one more charged word: For a subversive to organize or solicit others to subversion is called conspiracy.I actually find conspiracy to be a lovely word. Its Latin roots “con spire” literally mean “to breathe together”. When people act in conjunction with each other to do good things, however, another word that can define this kind of breathing together is partnership.

I actually find conspiracy to be a lovely word.Its Latin roots “con spire” literally mean “to breathe together”.

While we might at times have to “work secretly from within” for operational security, the best kind of conspiring is done out in the open, inclusive of greater and greater numbers, as opposed to exclusively for a privileged few. That partnership society is the kind of social paradigm I’m dedicated to help create through the open practice of visual art and writing.I have more to say about this “cultural subversion” concept, a lot more; and there will be more that I'll write. Art is not as removed from everyday life as some would have people believe, so as to give a justification to eliminate it from social and educational programs; and I’ll have more to say about that.To help me rope you into my conspiracy, -- and yes, I want us to conspire -- I have in the works a series of blog posts for the near future, including on one of my favorite teachers in cultural subversion, Rembrandt Van Rijn.In the meantime, your thoughts, please?

*Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

How Male Culture Is a Culture of Violence

I believe that every human being is born a creative – whether in the making of visual images, the willful manipulation of sound as music, expressing movement of the body through space in dance, enhanced communication through the poetic use of words… The Latin words ingenium and ingeniare denote cleverness to contrive or devise. Hence even the engineer who invents and assembles structures is first and foremost born an artist.

Sadly, the creative, artistic modes of thinking and feeling are murdered or maimed beyond recognition in many people. This often takes hold as early as the age of four, and tragically far gone by adolescence. There’s an age-old sickness in our society that I seek to address, and it expresses itself as male culture.Male culture in our society (for the moment I’ll address Western male society in particular) is a rape culture, a culture of dominance, a child abusive culture -- not a culture of nurturance. Violence is hard-wired into male culture.

As a result every man is a walking time bomb. Some men explode with destructive impact on those around them—spouses, children, associates, strangers, other men. Women have far too long borne the brunt of male violence and oppression. Other men quietly implode into addiction, depression and psychogenic-induced physical illnesses, or some combination of all of the above.

It persists because it’s socially sanctioned. It’s passed on from generation-to-generation, father-to-son as a kind of social blood curse. It’s ingrained in the playground and sports field rites of passage by which boys are terrorized into becoming so-called "men". Few if any survive it whole.

I believe it need not be this way.

My intention is to contribute to healing and social transformation through an art that expresses the truth -- whether through brutal honesty or through the celebration of beauty. I’ll have much more to say regarding these matters in the coming weeks and days how this might be done. I’ll say it as graphically, repeatedly and from as many angles as I can devise, here on this blog and through other social media. But it needs to be said starting now. Won't you join me in the conversation? Won't you help me in the social transformation?

How My Artist's Journey Began -- and Almost Didn't

Why do I make art? Why do the emotional tones of my artwork range from terrifying (“Walking On the Dark Side”) to the mystic and ineffable (“Transcendent”)? Why do I want you to purchase my art and keep me producing more?

This is my first blog post in my new website, and perhaps first newsletter article. (If you signed up for my newsletter, bear with me, please. This social media and content marketing thing is still awkward and unwieldy to this 1970’s hippie. I promise you I’ll get the kinks worked out. I’ve got a ton of goodies to give you.)

I was born in the Philippines some eight years after the end of World War II. My father, a veteran of that war, preceded us in journeying back to the U.S. and paved the way for my mother and me to emigrate. When I was twenty-two months of age, she and I boarded an airplane bound for the U.S.

Between 1955 and 1958 through my fourth year of age, our first residence was in New York City in a tenement building on 4th Street in the Bowery. This section on the southeast side of Manhattan Island was known as New York’s skid row even until the 1970s. We would come home to find derelict men passed out on our doorstep, reeking of urine and cheap alcohol.

We lived in a multi-floor railroad flat, so-called as the one-room apartments on each floor were stacked end-to-end, suggesting railway cars. Each apartment door opened onto the common hallway, with one shared bathroom at the far end. My only memory of that bathroom is unfortunately best left unspoken for the time being. (Maybe one day it will wind up as a piece in the "...Dark Side" gallery.)

On the positive side of the ledger, my mother would recount over the years an occurrence taking on the air of a family legend, though I have no recall of the incident itself. What I do remember is that my mother repeated with pride to whomever would listen that I -- as a three-year-old toddler -- had drawn a large and recognizable airplane on the dresser mirror, using my mother's lipstick as a crayon.

"I -- as a three-year-old toddler -- had drawn a large and recognizable airplane on the dresser mirror, using my mother's lipstick as a crayon."

What experience would a three-year-old know of airplanes? A photograph dated July 1955 gives us a clue.

My mother stands with me in her arms on an airport tarmac. Behind her is the silvery Northwest Orient "Connie" on which we flew. Big planes can make even bigger impressions to little boys.

One person to whom she undoubtedly related this story was Mr. Gordon, our landlord. I don’t know if that lipstick airplane is something Mr. Gordon ever saw, but he did see others of my youthful drawings, and knew thereby that I loved to draw.

In the hallway outside our door was a table with a thin drawer just beneath the tabletop. I recall my mother opening our door to allow me into the hallway to open that drawer each morning. I remember anticipating with excitement if Mr. Gordon had left blank paper inside for me to draw on -- typing paper, sheets of white butcher paper, hotel stationery and the like.

Besides stoking my passion for drawing, Mr. Gordon’s kindness had a farther-reaching consequence, perhaps unconscious to him or my family. Though I have no recollection of any artistic expression prior to 4th Street, or of whatever impression it would have made on anyone, I would speculate that Mr. Gordon was the first validation of my ability outside of my immediate family.

We were the proverbial “strangers in a strange land” in 1950s America. Mr. Gordon was a Caucasian man and our apartment landlord, an authority figure in the eyes of my parents, adding to the strength of that validation.

My mother recounted the lipstick airplane incident with pride, my father not so much. He was no advocate for  the mirroring that ideally should be part of the parent-child relationship at that stage of development. Most likely he was ignorant of it. Encouraging my artistic side would not have been considered important, let alone necessity -- had not an outside authority figure given it social validation. For a toddler, drawing airplanes and street sweepers was as natural a function as breathing. Envisioning me as a future district attorney, doctor or politician did not enter my four-year-old mind as a valid future. For my father it was. Spilling things, saying the "wrong" things at the wrong time, making marks where marks did not belong -- he dealt harshly with these infractions.

I know nothing else of Mister Gordon, his personal character, his past history or what his future would be. For all I knew he could have been a WWII concentration camp guard on the lam. He was after all a slumlord -- at night in our apartment we could hear rats gnawing behind the walls. He might have later become a wealthy philanthropist, a Big Daddy Warbucks. Who knows? But for a crucial moment in time, he was an angel sent into my life to make that crucial intervention. For this I am grateful.

Mr. Gordon, you were one of those persons that the psychologist Alice Miller referred to as efficient witnesses.

Children are born creative, all of them, all over the world without exception. That assertion is a cornerstone of my belief.

Children have also been subjected to physical and emotional abuse all over the world, over many ages and times, some by war, poverty, neglect and other forms, too often of the most horrific kinds. The heartbreaking images of drowned and maimed coming out of the Mediterranean refugee crisis are now all too common, children with voices that cannot be heard.

Many break as individuals. Others grow into adulthood absorbing the legacy of abuse into their personal culture, such that they themselves become abusers -- or in tolerating it, the carriers of violence and self-violence as a kind of self-perpetuating social disease.

Others survive in despite, and even recover to become advocates for social justice -- for children, or others. Why is this? Why do some survive psychologically, and others not? And how do they survive? The psychologist Alice Miller was such an advocate.

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd.

She coined the term enlightened witness as a person who is willing to support harmed individuals -- children most notably -- empathize and help them to gain understanding of and healing from their own biographical past. (Incidentally, late in life she fulfilled her desire to also be a painter. Her watercolor works are in print.)

As Dr. Miller noted in her studies, the damage caused in the child neurologically and emotionally sets in before the age of four years. For me, despite my initial encounters with the psychiatric world as a teen and years of introspection afterwards, my recovery did not effectively begin in this regard until relatively late in life.

Two factors that kept me going were the same two that got me started on my journey -- the creation of art, and the experience of the mystical or divine. All my life to date I’ve been on a hero's journey, these two common threads weaving through that journey.

I would extend the definition of enlightened witness to include crucial interventions of love coming from outside the immediate family environment that recognize and reinforce a child’s sense of what is precious and unique about his or her own humanity. That person -- the efficient witness -- through a kind word or gesture may be key in the emotional survival of the child, planting a seed for a future harvest.

Many people have shown me support and kindnesses over the years. In relation to my development as an artist as relates to my childhood I now pay tribute to one of the first efficient witnesses in my life.

Thank you, Mister Gordon, wherever you are in the universe now. In my own way, through my art, my writing and the process of bettering myself each day, I’m finding ways to leave paper where it’s needed.

Okay, that’s it for now. How did I do with my first blog post? I invite you to please comment below, or email me privately. Many more to come.