Like most moderately rational people, I was absolutely shocked in November, 2016, when a certain carrot-hued wannabe dictator won the White House. As a tail-end boomer, I simply took it for granted that the majority of folks in my age-group, the same generation that, in our youth, took to the streets in our multitudes in the name of ending a war and to force pro civil rights legislation, were a fairly liberal, left-leaning bunch, with shared values that include freedom and inclusiveness. I knew that other species of hominid existed, of course, but they were not, for the most part, even barely detectable in the circles I moved in, nor in the city in which I lived at the time (New York, which arguably exists in a different ideological multiverse than most of the rest of the U.S.). So my partner and I, like so many others, watched with gradually mounting horror as those purplish mid-west states on the PBS electoral map kept on turning red, one after the other. The sick feeling that took hold in my stomach is still there, albeit somewhat more subdued since the last election.
I am a painter, and so I spend a lot of time engaged in rumination. Prior to 2016 my work had never been particularly topical, and any inherent messaging has usually been pretty vague, mostly dealing with a handful of personal lifelong concerns such as wildlife and habitat loss, environmental degradation, human overpopulation, and impending climate catastrophe. A short while after the 2016 election, I began to feel compelled to make some sort of narrative statement about the social and political landscape in the U.S., to somehow distill some of what was going on and embed those ideas in my work. Like many artists, I am a bit of a filter, but digestion can take a while. I can chew the cud for ages. The ideas that do eventually form in my mind are often vague, or take the form of visual puns, occurring at their own pace, passively manifesting in my imagination.
And that’s where I was at when Charlottesville happened. That sick feeling intensified a little more with each evil chant given voice by khaki-clad neo-Nazis, with each glimpse of their menacing sneers, as each cheap-ass tiki-torch passed across my TV screen. And the realization hit me abruptly, like a punch in the face, that something dark had surfaced, something previously contained and kept at bay for years. Like a virus, it was suddenly set free. Of course it had always been there, but since maybe the 1960’s, mostly kept underground.
And that night, as I watched. something shifted in my brain, a door opened, and the filter engaged. Then the car plowed into the crowd, followed by Dear Leader’s declaration that there were “very fine people” on both sides. And I went to work.
The result, shortly thereafter, was “Very Fine People” (shown above).
I have kept working in that vein, producing several more works concerned with current events (some more directly than others) since. Below are a couple more examples. I thought they might feel at home here at Daily Kos. Enjoy.