aahhh a new year

man diggity dang e orangutan. so before I go on to rant about god knows what I will upload a couple of images...some are old .. some are new. The first drawing is pretty old...gathering momentum in the confines of my sketchbook. The second one is a fun small piece I did for Amanda. She told me I could whatever all I needed to know was that she's got some Cherokee going on, loves tea and elephants. So this was a treat and usually every time I draw native americans I feel a strange connection and I keep thinking like they're talking to me and saying things that I can't really understand or that perhaps I do understand but it's more of a subconscious thing. The last is some tripped-out ballpoint freakout I had in Alhambra back in the day. It's a drawing of Mary and Jesus after getting bashed in the face with a rock...a dirty self-righteous deed carried out by the Roman soldier on the bottom right. Truth is there are limitless windows into litmitless alternative realities but since we usually follow certain patterns of thinking our perception is limited... which is really really sad. This has been the cause of much frustration over the past couple of years and the only actions I can take that allow me to feel better about this is to dive in and immerse myself in an environment evolving out of the moment. Losing yourself in the work can be problematic, especially with so many distractions all the fucking time. A thousand tiny invisible hands trying to tear my flesh apart, numb my mind and dim my light. I had a great conversation with David about hypocrisy and I still believe that as civilized human beings one of the hardest things to do is not be a hypocrite. All of us deep down inside ourselves know right from wrong, we know what we want yet we fool ourselves constantly by false appearances and are at the mercy of systems designed to create followers. As I type this I'm aware of my own hypocrisy and it makes me upset but not as upset as to feel like tearing all foundations apart...perhaps one day an event will happen that will push me over the edge and I will be completely true to myself. To be true to my innermost enlightened self I would have to give up almost everything that I've learned to value the most... a difficult near impossible thing to do. But that's for the truly brave soul, perhaps one who doesn't believe he/she has anything to lose and all to gain.
I know reality is more complicated than left, right ... black,white ....right or wrong. We view things in simplistic terms. If we were able to use our brains to its full potential perhaps we would be able to visually and conceptually handle the limitless connections of history... the limitless connections of ourselves with each other, our planet and cosmos... perhaps we would be able to handle the vision of seeing someone and literally seeing naked reality manifest itself in front of your eyes... without any filters... you would see something that right now we are just not capable to understand....and we suffer because of this and will continue to suffer until some day we can shed all the baggage that we've accumulated.
We have so much potential... the sad but true thing is to create we must destroy. Destruction and creation are "two sides of the same coin". That's why first as artists we learn how to draw and once a person reaches a certain level of skill in order to evolve that person has to forget all he learns otherwise you may be able to be a great draftsman but that's about it.
There's more to art than just having technical skills. The real deal happens in the mind and how someone psychologically reacts to a work of art. In this journey I am alone and at the same time I'm not because there are others who know this and I've got thousands of years of collective memory to work from. I love you all and I hope you're on the path of self-discovery. Happy 2008!!
-Reinier