Thursday, October 26, 2006
(shown in both normal and UV light, as well as in sketch form.)
I used a mixture of sand and acrylic to do this. The painting itself is fairly heavy. I wanted to create something that looked like it was made of stone. Glowing bricks.
My Grandpa used to have a rock cutter and after he was done hunting rocks he would cut them in half and polish them up. I was always fascinated that this dull scraggly rock had such beautiful colors and lines inside. Blues to greens to purples to crystals. From dusty and dull to sparkly and smooth in under an hour. Sometimes he would glue little penguins or army men to the rocks (except for the ones that were 55 million years old.) I'm not kidding. They're still all over my Grandma's house.
Cool blues are so soothing to me.
Finally. This painting has mocked me for months. I don't know if you've ever been mocked by a painting, but let me tell you, they're vicious. I proudly proclaimed this 'finished' months ago, but immediately began reworking it and only now completed everything.
This is about ancient times and civilizations. Specifically, do you know what The Antikythera Mechanism is?
(The Antikythera Mechanism) I didn't until this past summer. It's an ancient analog computer that predicted the movement of planets. (!) It got me thinking about a lot of things that people don't seem to consider. Like, for instance, how do we really explain the rise and fall of very advanced peoples thousands of years ago? Do our computers and huge metropolitan cities really make us more advanced? Can we truly comprehend the knowledge held by these civilizations?
The implications are profound. It really forces one to question the reality of one's own beliefs. At the very least, it makes the entire journey of faith and understanding much more complicated. I like the introduction of new questions to my own spiritual journey. In my opinion, it makes God bigger and less defined, which I find reassuring. I like being reminded that we, as human beings, cannot possess the same knowledge as God. We do not know, and we cannot define GOD by our current time, current faiths, or current understanding. If we can assuredly say Who God is, what then, is the purpose of faith?
I don't know. It seems like 'the beginning of time' keeps happening... in cycles almost.
