A Grant About Power Systems Needing to Go

Post-Nuclear Family 2020. Acrylic on paper, 12 x 16"

Just got word that a grant request I submitted back in November has been accepted. I’m getting paid to create 25 - 30 paintings for exhibition before December, 2022. That’s good news!

A several page application, but the following overview will give you the gist:

This is a painting project intended to educate about alternative definitions of power, especially as it concerns freedom and art. I will create 25 - 30 new paintings and exhibit them at the Art Association of Oswego. Early 20th century psychologist Karl Groos studied infants and recorded their delight after figuring out that their actions could cause predictable effects. For instance, the observable thrill expressed by babies after manipulating the path of a toy by randomly moving their arms, and then repeating the action and getting the same effect. Expressions of utter joy would ensue. Groos coined the phrase “the pleasure at being the cause,” suggesting that this is the basis for play, which he saw as the exercise of powers simply for the sake of exercising them. Before Groos’ study, the majority of economists and social scientists believed humans seek power because of “an inherent desire for conquest and domination”. 100 years of repeated experimental evidence proved otherwise, that aggressive suppositions like Nietzsche’s “will to power” were unfounded. Human beings love play and seek fulfillment through self expression, not domination. Groos posited we exercise our powers as an end in themselves, even if the situation is pretend, which reminds me of another keen observer of humanity, Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Tying his work to the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Schiller, Groos suggested that this is all that freedom is. For instance, the desire to create art “is simply a manifestation of the urge to play as the exercise of freedom for its own sake as well. Freedom is our ability to make things up just for the sake of being able to do so”. Those who are denied (or deny themselves) the personal power of make-believe suffer openly as literal prisoners and slaves, or privately by the self-imposed refusal to implement their innate powers of freedom. As we come out of a once in a several generation pandemic, humankind is faced with the awesome responsibility to dismantle the dominating power systems that threaten life on earth with climate and nuclear catastrophe, whichever comes first. My paintings will address the insanity of present power paradigms, and seek solutions to arrest the onset of doom. Certainly, a theme like this advances equity, diversity, and inclusion—microbes, CO2 ppms, and thermonuclear weapons do not discriminate. We are all in this fight/no-fight together. I have been painting and writing for 30 years, 15 of them professionally. I paint nearly every day, exhibit regularly, and publish books on art, culture, and politics. I would hope that the community would support a painter/philosopher intending to exhibit paintings with ideas to preserve the community:)

The Warming Up Time Came Too Early Again This Year 2017. Acrylic on paper, 12 x 16"

The Six Stages of the Corona Process 2020. Acrylic on (6) 6 x 6" canvas boards