68.5 x 56 cm. Watercolor, ink, burned Buddhist paper.
Artists learn early that art won’t save us. Not that it ‘can’t,’ but that it won’t. A refusal. No different for the few who find ways to manipulate the capitalist machine to grant them false compensation in money, though that may make it easier to hide from the truth.
I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve worked on my last few pieces. No more than our children can save us, I thought. I feel, even as I work, the increasing distance, this alien thing, this work of my hand and eye–how it absorbs something of the power of the sacred, a power that is not, and never was, my own. And never will be. Like our children–we want them to live, to shine with that life that will never be ours, even as they abandon us to death.
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Jacob Russell's Magic Names 