drift into the fog

In the last few months I've been working on my own Annunciation scene. For anyone unfamiliar, the Annunciation is the scene in the Bible in which the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear the son of God. I've a book filled with nothing but Annunciation scenes, from my mother.

The tone and symbols of the various paintings are fairly consistent, considering that they range 16 centuries. Mary is usually praying or studying scripture in her home or garden when she is surprised by an angel of God bearing news of her pregnancy, and usually various sexual symbols are scattered around the painting. Behind Mary, a bed, a male angel entering the door of her home or the gate of her garden, a lily in hand or in a vase, and sometimes a ray of light pouring through a window toward her womb. Meanwhile, as Gabe drops the bomb, Mary is sometimes mildly shocked looking, but more often, morosely calm, her fingers still marking her page as she glances momentarily at the interruption.

In nearly all, the painting depicts a setting contemporary to the artist; an attractive European woman dressed in the humblest of European fashion surrounded by rich draperies in a lavish room, despite the subject matter of a young Jewish peasant girl. The most notable exceptions to the indulgent anachronisms are the versions by both James Tissot and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

As an attempt of my own, contemporary Annunciation, I'm working with spray paint on birch plywood. Irony is not the intent, of course, as a non-Christian. I think that the subject matter of religion is important, no matter how much one abstains from it in ones personal life.

Healthy, wealthy, white American male.

No one thinks they are evil. Doubt in yourself is the only thing that is going to encourage you to continue questioning your ethics and lifestyle. The first step toward evil is to believe you are doing good. To believe you are a patriot, a hero, a martyr, a fighter, a leader is to cock a gun. Every flaw in me has some sort of perceptible moral attribute. The only human aspect I think I can argue is truly evil isn't even ignorance, but apathy.

And I am hell.

From my living room I can see people die in movies and shows, and I can feel nothing. I've played countless video games about killing, in scenarios of vague moral justification, and I can have fun.

Nestled comfortably on the couch, I can see on the news thousands of humans suffering on the other side of the world because of my nation, for my comfort. I know about laborers working and dying in terrible conditions and for wages that only bind them into debt. I know of billions of animals that have never seen natural light from birth to slaughter. I know of refugees displaced from their homes by child slave armies. I know of humans like me thrown into secret prisons and tortured indefinitely for maybe opposing foreign domination, maybe not.

But instead of thinking about it, screaming about it, really doing anything about it, I'd rather stick my nose in a book, watch a comedy, and go to bed after brownies and ice cream.

The tree of my prosperity is rooted in dark blood.

And I eat from its fruit everyday.

Nobody believes he or she is evil.

Been thinking today about self, and how you can't really partition that idea off to itself.

I'm familiar with the saying "You are what you eat." Very accurate, though I feel incomplete. You are where you are. We are our context. Not just what we eat, but what we drink, breathe, touch, see and hear.

Our bodies only carry the same cells for a limited time. Cells have life cycles, and without any scientific citations, I think the oldest cells in your body die after approximately seven years.

So what are you?

Immortality is boring.

Gods have entitlement issues. My soul is mine, and I'm taking it with me, even if I have to line my coffin with it. Nestle into nothingness.

Posts from sketchbook.

I managed to scan some of my pages from my sketchbook before I left for London. A lot of these pieces are older, with the major exception of the soldier, which was an experiment with a new gouache.

Mariology

Blasphemy comes easily. I keep thinking about the Virgin Mary, since I'm finally nearing that part of my larger painting to start painting her. I've been sketching out some icons and a few cursory annunciation scenes. I'd rather like to do some studies in oil of some of the forms she's taken. Perhaps if this painting is successful I'll manage to do a separate approach to an annunciation.

The concept of the Annunciation intrigues me. There's such brief but important mention of it in the scriptures, and there are many unanswered questions. This is good, though, because there's then a wide range to explore; her age, her setting, her service, her fear. Did she resent the lack of choice? Did she rejoice? Really? What if a girl today was announced by an angel that she was impregnated by a deity?