The
following statement was written in March of 2003:
I completed
this painting during this past month of imminent war. The scene is outside
a destroyed Afghani village. The landscape depicted was created with
a digitally modified and enlarged newspaper photo. That it is specifically
Afghanistan is not of paramount importance. That it shows a field of
war, as we have learned to visualize it from newspaper photos or television
images over the past year and a half--that expansive desert landscape
that stretches from Central Asia to the Middle East--is important. That
landscape is embedded in our imagination, and it is there that the drama--or
tragedy--of our current war, and our future, is being played out.
The distressed
looking figure with arms outstretched in supplication speaks to an angry
bat. For me the bat is the madness and fear darkening our world, and
all of its attendant causes and conditions: the impatience with diplomacy,
boundless hatred and fear of enemies, thirst for revenge, the myopia
of fundamentalisms whether of religions, politics, or economics, sanctimonious
bellicosity. The bat is like a compact nuclear missile winging wildly
above the earth, and the kneeling figure is everyone who sees the threat
and despairs.
I
wanted the painting to have the impact of a sacred encounter. When I
imagined the kneeling figure speaking to a bat I thought of Simone Martini's
painting of the Annunciation in the Uffizi Gallery, and so added golden
words to my picture: "Come home dark angel, leave the world in
peace, find succor in my weary heart." We must know that this madness
that afflicts us--now manifest in an ill-considered war for which the
consequences may be very different from the democracy-engendering pie
in the sky scenario its advocates would have us believe--arises ultimately
from the human heart, and a lack of human understanding and empathy.
The kneeling, beaten down supplicant displays an act of true compassion
(not the politically expedient compassion glibly invoked by our leaders)
calling the madness home so that the world may once again flourish.