Addendum: Moyo's Shirt

This summer I was fortunate enough to visit with Moyosore Ogundipe, mentor, teacher and great artist. I gave him the shirt he asked me to paint roses on about two years ago. He liked it and received many compliments on it when he was on his way back home to Nigeria.

Eden in the works.

I'm working on a painting, I think it will be called Regeneration of Eden, and it is mostly filled with an enormous mass of branching trees. The branches cut up the top of the composition into an array of irregular shapes. At this point, I'm working on the distant area past the tree grove on the left side, filling it with shapes and colors that resonate abstractly with the tree. Surprisingly, it is visually appealing to me to make squares and straight lines. This recalls the history of mankind and all the straight lines, perfect squares, perfect circles and so on, that mankind has made or attempted to make. Do perfect shapes occur in nature? As natural creatures, are we purposefully evolved with the capacity and urge to perform these perfect shapes? Is this an accident? It compels me to consider the possibility that our perfect-shape-making is perchance an act of nature creating balance for all the chaotic forms. Think of the rows of trees in an orchard, orderly nature and beautiful.

The appearance of the square and line in this current painting of mine create contrast and balance with the branch shapes. Is there a possibility that our minds find some comfort in the perfect shape? Have we grown to enjoy its control? Maybe our minds have adapted to the box shapes dwelling and find comfort in their forms. Would a child raised in a dome shaped home have a different psychology than the typical right-angle fed child?

                                   Eden in the Works 36" x 48" oil on canvas

That's all for now.

Is Pregnancy Offensive?

Tonight I was scheduled to hang artwork at a local cafe and was told I had to take a painting down because it might offend some people, specifically women and children. The painting, was not a nude painting, or portraying anything racist, religious nor political. It was a painting of me, pregnant. Now, really, who would find this offensive? -and why?
Sure, I was bearing my bare belly, but the rest of me was decent, and the composition is excellent, the technical quality good. I didn't argue with the owner of the business. Afterall, it is their place and if they don't like it, I have no argument. In fact, I was quite flattered at the idea that one of my paintings might offend people. Still, it leaves me to question exactly why pregnancy is at all offensive to a race of beings that rely on the event of pregnancy to exist.

Hm.