Medium: Acrylic on Canvas.
Size: 18″ x 24″
Each of us struggles with the unknown. Unless we are endowed with psychic abilities, the future is a great mystery. We grapple with our intended purpose, and we endeavor to find our place in the world. This inherent element of uncertainty conditions most of us to worry about the future. Since none of us is governed solely by a single emotion, we certainly experience hope and anticipation as well as melancholy and fear in the face of the unknown.
In a hurry to ascend the prescribed stepladder of life, we end up living in the future mentally. The battle to be present-minded is easily eclipsed by our desire for security and success (monetary, physical and emotional) in all facets of life: relationships, careers, education, and so on. Seduced by the material, we are largely driven by tangible, concrete yearnings and thus, forget our energetic selves. I digress.
My motivation to paint “Braving the Unknown” stems from a personal sense of uncertainty about my future, but it also stems from discerning a collective uncertainty about the future that extends beyond the individualized self. It’s impossible to look at our global welfare – environmental, economic, social, humanitarian, political – with indifference. I find that the continual denial of climate change, the intolerance of homosexuality, the propagated fear of immigrants, and the general superiority complex of the United States are intolerable. As the invigorating HOPE, once offered, turns to dust, the future of my beloved country seems so uncertain. Listening to the current GOP theatrics, or debates, I don’t know if I should laugh, cry, or shudder.Yet, like everything, we – individuals, governments, nations, and people – are a part of a cycle. There will be renewal. The fire that burns a forest to ash also gives birth to a new forest.
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