Commentary
207 creative works found
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Collage on canvas
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Zakopane, South west Poland. These were probably gypsies, I’m told – but it could be anyone on the wrong side of the tracks, anywhere in the world. J’ACCUSE [still in progress] ‘I should have more faith,’ Holmes said. ‘I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed by a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation…How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’ - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Dog, dogma: dogma, God. / Where is our constant friend? / Where has he gone today? / - Is he: / Hiding under the table, like Spot the Dalmatian? / - Is he: / Perched on the windowsill, like Wee Willy Winky? / - Is he: / Creeping upon the stair, like the man who wasn’t there? / - Is he: / Some malign force in the skull of a drowned pig, like Legion? / No. / His holiday haunt – just for this week – reposes in / “Our anthropic bias”: remote yet required, he is (like / Income Tax) and needed to explain / Why there’s so much soot in the cosmos. / Diligent astronomers line up, eager to assure: / It’s the Lord who puts lead in your pencil. How hard of heart you think I must be / To scorn the longings of good people. / Only – oh, yes – I crave eternity as much as / Any of them: yearning as much as any for comfort; / Or to be promised that their lives (as much as mine) / Were not in vain – were not shop-soiled, or naked, or / Somehow dirtied. And so there has to be an anger, / Not of contempt, but of infrangible disappointment: / As if for a love that was pledged, yet which / Could not be; leaving only the wake of betrayal. / It’s not annihilation that is unbearable, / But only the possibility of hope. There’s Samuel Butler, I suppose: / “Once we explain a thing, we must / Remove it from the sphere of divine action.” / You wily old snake, O Lord: whenever the glare of scrutiny / Dazzles you out, you bed down somewhere else. / “God of the Gaps” my logic tutor called you, / Slipping yourself into shadows, like a Spiv. / Concerning your account, too, the little question of / An infinite regress: / Of who created you – if it’s so bad to have / One uncreated thing; / Who fashioned the elegant architect, if elegance / Demands an architect – if brute coercion must, / For once, be beautiful? / / Miracles? For sure, they’re all around us. Each feather / Or each song of the lyrebird is one; and but for / Another (less strange, they tell me, / Than the forming of a soap bubble) we’d not exist / At all. To think! / There’d be no chance for speculation, and an / Inanimate void might shimmer in its fecund silence – / Saved from our dissimulation, spared at least / The prattle of precarious minds. “When I hear Bach, I know there is a God.” / No, Dr Einstein; you do not. When you hear Bach / You know there is a Bach. / Two things serve as the measure of humanity: / Compassion is one, and memory of pain. Yeah, yeah: blah, blah. We need an afterlife to / Square the circle, make those grand impostors fair. / Trouble is, God old boy, we clocked your number long ago. / You made us a mite too bright; we pried too hard. / For God so loved our world, that he made flies / Whose maggots crawl into a sleeping brain – / Eating it away from inside: / And a child’s mind slithers down her nose, like snot. / For God so loved our world, he fashioned other worms / That creep towards the sun on stalks of wheat, and then / They’ll hitch a ride, guzzling through one’s skin with acid spit. / Soon afterwards they’ll shred the victim’s lights and lungs: / A grown man coughs on bloody gobbets – and, as he chokes, / They’ll slide down to his guts, to make their / Home Sweet Home. I’ve seen the superhuman indignities of old age: / The long nights of senescent, emptied lives, / Meaning nothing, God, to you. / (Sparing that cracker-motto crap about the Hereafter / Wherein we rise, in a flurry of angels – / Preceded, inevitably, by choking on our false teeth. / It’s bollocks: like all your other, busted incentive / Schemes, that keep us lame, and tame, docile and debased.) See, God old Sport – me old mate, me old Cobber – it’s not / As if your cruelty were a necessary evil: / Something to make us think, or learn, or grow. / No. Sadism, for you (inventive in a way; / Not lacking in imagination)…it’s vindictive, / Petty, needless, squalid, nasty, cheap. / It lays waste swathes of decent souls, like a pandemic: / It’s undeserved, and makes good people stumble; / It saps them, soils them, makes them less than once they were. I know your meagre mind, O Lord, and your forbearance – / Thin as slime mould. You’re rubbish, God. God: you’re / Dead meat. Oh, and God? I spit on your grave. Man’s profligacy comes from loneliness. / Beyond Man springs the abundance of what was never / Meant to be. Here, beyond our fingers, is the reckless, futile / Richness of what was unplanned. Stretch out your hand. / Ours is the bounty of the bold insurgent, / Not the pasty gaze of slaves. Stephen Jackson January 2005 (Finished 2007)
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I’d just been trashed myself when I made this, so I was quite interested in contemporary variations on the dating-and-dumping game. Again, my mush and a flatbed scanner – not an orthodox camera in sight.
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Besser Block triffords spy on queenslanders (HOUSES ON STILTS INDICATIVE OF TROPICAL QUEENSLAND) ...until they fall asleep when bulldozer strikes in the name of deveopment. Available for sale approx 120cm x 90cm AUS$1500 including p&p / Digital print – eye and oil on canvas / deannamaich@yahoo.com.au
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Everything is not what is seems at first glance. This is an integration of a known religious theme to a current situation of human rights violations. The main figure represents any victim of human rights. The perpetrators surrounding the figure represent the world Ethnicities and religions that have participated in human rights violations. The cloth at the bottom of the page is the Iraqi flag.
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A good look at the general “Who cares, let’s party” attitude towards the Earth’s overall plight. . . Pen & Ink and Color Pencil and Photoshopped Globe
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Social commentary about the daily life of the back streets of our city, any city. . . Oil on Stretched Canvas – No Airbrushing 18 X 36 inches / 46 X 92 cm Original : / Sold / contact my Agents at Gallery 112 / ....................................................................................
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Acrylic on Canvas 18×24
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This is my entry to APG’s Weekend T-Shirt Challenge that asks designers to predict the future…250 years into the future to be exact. And, while many predict bleak glimpses and a few depict happy shiny places, I have chosen to depict the inevitable decline of our U.S. economy (because, at the rate it is going, we are almost there) into the era of “Land of the Free Gift with Purchase and Home of the Buyer.” That’s right, Wal-Mart will take over and rule the nation! But, hey, it’s already a bully, so maybe we’ll eventually gain world domination! And, who knows, maybe price cuts (aka “rollbacks”, in Wal-Mart lingo) and senior citizens greeting at the borders are what this country really needs?!? / CREATION INFORMATION Medium: Mixed Media Design, Digital Illustration, Vector Art. Technique: Graphic Design using Vector paths, layer masks, and digital rendering. Tools: Photoshop CS3, these fine brushes, and my brain. Model: Lady Liberty. / CONTEST & CHALLENGE HISTORY 06/23/08 – Entry to Agent Provocateur Group’s Weekend T-shirt Challenge / ALSO AVAILABLE / Have You Seen The New Five Dollar Bill? Cards & Wall Art /
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The news media is meant to provide a window on world and national events. The US media operates 180 degrees away from this principle. Self interest always trumps truth. The glasses can be seen as a metaphor for what the media should be, the hammer as a metaphor for what it actually is.
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A variation of Poppy Dark, Dismal, Bright, and 3 with a little added prose for effect.
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A composite artwork depicting the despair of a humpback whale while attempting in vain to escape the pain and agony inflected upon it by modern military sonar (LFAS). / / I hope to make aware with this artwork, an issue that is usually overlooked or ignored when considering and discussing the efforts to protect all the beautiful mammals of the deep. The attention on marine mammal slaughter is too often only focused on the ongoing brutality of Japanese whaling vessels, this due to the graphic nature of the images of the senseless whale slaughter. / / But ponder this for a moment if you will… what fate is worse than death for a whale? / / I feel the answer to this is, when a whale is suffering in such utter and complete agony as it’s own blood boils, that it chooses to fling itself from it’s ocean home and onto a beach to die slowly from dehydration… choosing to die in this manner, rather than endure another moment of torture from the man-made source of it’s agony. / / How incredible the whale’s pain must be… for a whale to choose suicide as a better option. / / PLEASE, take a moment to read the accompanying article by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that I have linked below to accompany this artwork. It will help to educate and enlighten you about this important issue regarding protecting the whales and other marine mammals from military LFAS type sonar. I think you will be quite surprised just how dangerous and violently harmful LFAS type sonar actually is! / / NRDC – Protecting Whales from Dangerous Sonar / http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/sonar.asp / / After you have read this article, then please take another moment to voice your opposition to using LFAS type sonar directly to the US Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Donald Winter, using this easy and convenient online form provided by the NRDC. Stand up and let your voice make a difference! / / Tell the Navy to stop harming whales with high-intensity sonar / http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/nrdcaction_092506_a / / All my own proceeds from any sale of this artwork are being donated to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing. Founded in 1970, NRDC today has 1.2 million members and online activists nationwide, and a staff of more than 300 scientists, attorneys, and other specialists. / / Natural Resources Defense Council / http://www.nrdc.org/ / / NRDC Action Fund / http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/ / / Now a few words about the details of the artwork. Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro 8 were used to create this composite artwork. The artwork is a composite of two PD images, ironically provided by two of the governmental agencies that are contributing to the issue depicted in the artwork. / / The submarine image source is a PD image courtesy of the US Department of Defense – DefenseLINK Multimedia Gallery. The whale image source is a public-domain image courtesy of NOAA Photo Library. I have provided links below for both source images. / / Submarine Source Image / http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2007/Navy/DN-SD-07-28560.JPEG / / Whale Source Image / http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/bigs/sanc0601.jpg / / I hope that both the artwork and accompanying article will enlighten you, and help you gain a new found perspective, on just one of the many issues that are currently threatening the existence of our marine mammal friends. / / Thanks for the visit! / / Art4Earth /
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Drought ravaged landscape near Bothwell, Tasmania. Storm clouds gather over an abadoned farmworker’s cottage, but it arrives, all too late and too little, to make much difference. The rain lasted but 10 minutes. Tasmania is in the midst of one of the severest and longest droughts on record. The whole state was brought under interim drought declaration from September 2007, with parts of the Midlands, East Coast and Flinders Island declared to be in Exceptional Circumstances from that date. There has been well below average rainfall since that time, and it is estimated that sheep properties in the drought-affected areas are now carrying 30-40% of normal stocking rates. The drought is having serious impacts not only on livestock but also on the health and welfare of the rural community. To some drought is just a natural part of the business and lifestyle of farming, it comes with the territory, and should be managed and treated as such. To others drought is an aberrant natural phenomenon beyond the control of even the best farming operator, and support should be provided accordingly. Whatever the truth of the matter, the real effects of drought on real people can be devastating and profound. Drought is about more than land and animals. Drought is also not just about the mechanics and business of farming, but about people, about health and wellbeing, about education, community welfare, social cohesion, rural living, and about all the aspects of life that humans are involved in. link Canon 40D IS 18-55 tonemapped with processing emphasis on creating a gloomy picture.
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Sister image to Too Little – Too Late Drought ravaged landscape near Bothwell, Tasmania. Storm clouds had gathered over an abadoned farmworker’s cottage, but the rain was fleeting and lasted only 10 minutes, giving way to blue skies, once again. The image of Tasmania, that many tourists see, of silver sands, sparkling blue sea, and green valleys, lush with apples and grape vines, belie the fact that much of Tasmania is in serious drought. The farms that are green lie mainly in the valleys and are drawing water from rivers and streams that are already depleted by the drought. Canon 400D 18-55 IS
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Alex and Sammy, professional tourists, at hard work LOL
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A comment on the tabloidification of modern news journalism (at least in the UK), be it in print or on television. The myopic chase for sales or viewing figures has left integrity and intelligence way behind.
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Scissors & Glue Collage
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As we were driving the Southern Motorway – texture background.
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view larger please
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Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Neo: What truth? Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. ... ...and dear JFK didn’t get shot because he went along with “the Boys”... “The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.” ~ Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association: President John F. Kennedy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, April 27, 1961 I simply ask, “What price our lifestyle? Our freedom! ~ Original photo used as part of this image… /
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