majesty

There's this painting at Janet's house that hangs on her wall. It inspires me a great deal, because it dives deep down into one's awareness of the self and asks it to view the world from all perspectives. A person's vantage point is so integral to forming opinions, making judgments, coming to an understanding. This is why I find this picture so fascinating.



First off, I'm one to be very critical of other people's works of art, especially when they are those created just for fun. This isn't a flattering trait of mine, but I have found it safer to be cautious until I truly explore what I feel are the aesthetic qualities of a piece of art. I'm no connoisseur by any means, but I do enjoy watching the picture stimulate my senses and attempting to find what my perception makes of it all.

That being said, at first, I didn't like this. As Janet began telling me what was her source of inspiration for this, it started to make more sense to me. Every person's analysis is different, but this is what I see:

Janet mentioned that this canvas had started out as a cityscape (click the picture to get a larger version, zoom in and see if you can make out the edges of buildings, the industrial colors of a city). She ended up not being satisfied, and instead used a stick to splatter a spiderweb of black and gray house paint over top (you will see the irony of using house paint in a second). I see flowers in the black paint that grow wildly, hence the chaotic nature of the black paint. The black, as Alex put it, is "venomous", growing without any sort of limits as Mother Nature would allow within the realms of ecology. But wait, what makes the growth venomous? It is the city that does - society attempts to strip land, bulldoze, make way for urban sprawl. We see behind the branches the hidden intent of the world, to one day come forth from the background and dominate with its hues of orange, brown.

So what is good? Is it the environment that is venomous or the city subtly hidden behind it? Which is more insidious?

Thinking spiritually, cock your head to the right side and look at the branches. Janet pointed out to me that you can see a fairy in the midsts - its nose is that first notch at the top and its wings are the petals of the flower. Is this is woodly sprite? We rarely think of plants having a presence other than that to entertain the barren corners of our household, but perhaps there is more God in our lives than we notice (or at least a slightly tangible version of Gaia). Are we eliminating the spirits of the very woods that first inhabited this earth by destroying nature?

Lastly, I just want to point out the clear demarcation set out by the horizon. You see below the horizon is orange, yellow, green - poisonous colors that remind of toxic waste, industrial sewage, man. Above the colors are a little more vibrant, some greens from pollution, then blue. Here is the delineation at the very point which you see the sky. There in the clouds man has not yet been able to touch. It's beautiful. Everything else in the cityscape has been clouded by smog, pollution, artistic noise. Industry swallows nature.

But contemplate this: Ian had envisioned that the painting actually was best upside down, where the skies were autumnal and the soils were green and lush with waters azure. Simply by changing perspectives, we can change the entire meaning of this painting. Try applying perspective to how you see the world and you might find that you come to entirely different conclusions based on subtle changes in your frame of mind.

Like I said, fascinating.