Coming Up Short

This painting is wrong. Probably because I didn't know what I was doing when I started it. I always have a vague concept, but it sounds too cliche to say out loud, which I suppose is why I choose painting to express these things rather just writing about it. 

I guess it is supposed to be about a philosophy of life, or searching for one. There are always things to find- ideas, theories, feelings-- but then there is always more to find. There's never an end, a finite discovery. I suppose religious people would disagree with me, but I can't comprehend the kind of faith that they have in what appears to be a random coincidence of good things in the world, embodied in a superior being. I keep repeating this process of searching, not really finding anything concrete, creating more questions than procuring answers, coming up short.

To make this painting right, I would reverse the visual hierarchy, put the faceless people below the figures who are rooting through the pebbles. As it is, it seems to connote the possibility of superior beings in a higher dimension. That's not really how i meant them to be-- I wanted it to represent the myriads of people who seem to float through life without questioning anything, people who think that petty things matter. It doesn't support the meaning, the way the images are organized now.

It's kind of funny-- I don't really talk to my family about what my art specifically means, but I suppose that since I grew up around my dad, it shouldn't be a surprise that some of the things we believe are fundamentally the same. I was reading a forwarded email from my dad today, when someone's "signature" caught my eye. It was a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." It's a simple thought, one that I think connects with my belief that we make things too complicated, to power and greed-driven, too numb to the prospect of humanity's best interests. I looked to see who's signature it was; It surprised me to see that it was my dad's. He's never struck me as a big Tolkien fan, and it seemed like a weird quote to choose for one's business email, specifically because big business doesn't really contribute to what Tolkien would consider to be a merry world. This made me smile, made me really happy like I haven't been in a while. I don't have to explain my art to my dad.

He already knows.