#312

This is one of 5 color studies on chipboard I did in 2014. Been in the basement, and looked like it gotten moldy, brought it up to trash it. The mold turned out to be cement dust. Cleaned it, and looked better than I remember. I think these 5 together could be used as an ‘architectural’ supplements –built into a wall (their 3/4 inch, and quite heavy). I’ll take new photos of all of them.
40″ x 30″ Acrylic on chipboard
#312.jpgView more work at Saatchi Art, and on my web portfolio: ART BY WILLARD For photos on this blog, click MY ART on the right panel and scroll down.

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#872 R S, #873 T U V

8″x 10″ watercolor, pen and ink on canvas board
#872 R S.jpg

#873 T U V

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View more work at Saatchi Art, and on my web portfolio: ART BY WILLARD For photos on this blog, click MY ART on the right panel and scroll down.

Mourning and Loss: on the death of an animal friend

#599From a Journal entry, 2003. On the death of AriCat… male urinary blockage.

There comes a point when you’ve examined your resources, faced what is possible and what is probable, when you realize that the right course is no longer action, but acceptance.

Not resignation—things can change, and if they do, you retain the capacity and will to act accordingly,  but it is important to know how, and when—to let go.

What Ari needs isn’t more tubes shoved up his penis or drugs or being left in a cage in a vets office… he needs to feel a warm hand when he reaches out his paw, and to be left in peace to resolve his animal life into the mysterious Nothing from which he came, and to which we all ultimately belong.

I say to Zeke and Ari every night before going to sleep; All animals are equal in our dreams, for at the gates of the great dream of death, we are equal. He is not merely an object of pity—he is a fellow creature who can teach us—who, even as he nears death, grows more powerful in a wisdom beyond words or thought.

There is a temptation to grow frantic in trying to save a creature from what we ourselves fear—when if we grow still and listen, we will see that they are not afraid—and not because they don’t know what is going to happen. We are as ignorant of death as they are—only more arrogant in our presumption. and it is the presumption and the arrogance that makes us afraid. Ari is now our guide, our teacher. It’s time to let go, to be humble in our animal lives, to be sad, not out of desperation, but out of love, and because sadness, too,  is part of the fullness of life..

 

Philadelphia Orchestra Goes to Hell

No  one could have greater regard for the value, and necessary autonomy of creative work, than me, but art doesn’t exist outside of political reality, and an artist, of whatever medium, who disregards how their work is employed, will be themselves complicit in the uses to which their work is put.
Yes, I’m thinking about the musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra–who go to Israel to bath in the blood of murdered Palestinian children.

This is so terribly troubling for me, because I hold the music they serve, and all of the arts, in such high regard.

Because they have refused to accept their own agency, and allowed the machinery of economic “necessity” to determine what they will, and will not do, they defile the art they are devoted to, and themselves with it.

Better there be no Great Philharmonic. Better they ply their trade busking on the street. Better shut down the monstrous Kimmel Center–temple of money and poisoner of art and artists. The more money it takes the make a work of art, or performance, the greater the pollution.

In this world, the best artists will perform for the people, make their art from trash on the street.

Capitalism defiles everything

Nothing can remain Sacred in this world, until we cleanse it of the disease of Capitalism.