Matter Yearning for Meaning

Matter Yearning For Meaning

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​"Matter Yearning For Meaning" - oil on Yupo, 18.5 x 24 inches.  This item is sold unmounted and unframed.  (click on the image to purchase)

Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. - MARIA POPOVA

There's this thing about aging.  A shift in mind and sense of place in the world that makes very clear what a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance​ we are.  The chemistry of my body and brain is responsible for many wondrous (and a few frustrating) things.  That chemistry can allow feelings of exuberant joy and also deep sadness and fear.

And don't get me started on chance.  Where I am, what I do, who is near to me and how I think about all of it is so much an amalgamation of chance happenings and situations.  We don't choose our parents.  We don't choose our genetic make-up. We don't choose much of anything about the direction of our lives until we near adulthood.  And even then - how much of our choices are truly choice vs a continuation of patterns and paths or completely random encounters and events?
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And so, in a truly happenstance conflagration of chemistry and chance, I recently found myself in a heroic, therapeutic  psilocybin journey which left me even more aware of the fragility of that entire constellation and the brevity of all that is.​  Oh!

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About the art:  continuing an exploration of a mash-up of robot and human as in the ballgown bot series, except this time exposing the vulnerable flesh of humanness with the slight augment of the cyborgian (is that a word?).  The goal with this piece was to embrace the neutrality of the figure coloring and allow the background and the robotic arm pieces to be the only obvious color.  As always, the Yupo allows an easy, relatively rapid layering of oil paint, and also the ability to carve back through it (the background design elements and the artist's signature) to expose a pale pink underpainting.  This piece just oozes strength and bold badassery to me.  Yaaaaasssss please.

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Congratulations to Dotty and Marta!  Wonder Mike chose your names at random as winners of the  August Reader Giveaway!  Send your mailing addresses to Wonder Mike at [email protected] and your free art will be shipped to you lickety split!  And thanks so much to all who participated.  A new contest begins next month!  Hooray!