Response to Machiavelli Abstract Series

This series of paintings highlights the role that morality does or does not play in our political discourse. While politicians of all flavors are more than willing to throw the "god" word around like that Power is their best friend, are the decisions that they make ultimately morally based or simply politically expedient? Machiavelli proposed in his book, The Prince, that the "ends justify the means;" this series of paintings responds to that premise, offering a truly moral perspective on political issues. The paintings are based in the words of some of history's greatest social and political philosophers, including Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mencius, Meister Eckhart, Baal Shem Tov, the Sufi masters of Islam and many others.

The paintings themselves are reactions to various morally based social comments by these great masters. After reading about these issues, I use both figurative and abstract images to explore them in paint. Broken and slatted wood supports (metaphor, perhaps, for the abysmal state of politics today?) are contrasted with beautiful color, mysterious glyphs and the almost cartoon-like representation of a populace that is strangled by the pretensions and emotional immaturity of its leadership.

Ultimately, the paintings offer a counterpoint to a political system that is, at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, truly Machiavellian where politicians from all political stripes will say and do just about anything to achieve and retain their personal power. What the great masters offer, and what I attempt to express, is a different manner of leadership, one in which the concerns of the people are truly at the fore.