Forests and Trees

Do I lack conviction? Do I lack passion? What is it that I'm missing? I guess I'm concerned that if I just come right out and say how I feel, I'll be preaching to the choir. The choir is, of course, the general art appreciating public - the gallery frequenting liberals who share much of my way of thinking. So, I must say what I feel, but I must do it in a way that confuses my choir and induces their thought from a different angle. My newest body of work that will be shown in June starts to breach this idea. It is the visual record of a multiplicity of experience in West Africa. One part will reflect my research on child soldiering; the other, my personal experience in The Gambia. The result will be disparate images forced to occupy the same visual space of the rectangular canvas. It is extremely difficult for me to distance myself from my paintings in order to take the role of the viewer unaware of the artist's intentions. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to decipher the information I've painted with no background knowledge of the pieces. To that end, I must make sure that the paintings are all aesthetically valuable - to draw the attention of the viewer and to make them want to learn more about the art. In this way, the form takes precedance over the content, but continues to reinforce it. These two trees, shape and content, must share the space enough to be read as a forest.