March | 2024 | Ethics and Spirituality

Looking Up to Women – A746

Celebrating Women’s History Month with images that inspire reverence and awe. Plus the history of two giant sculptures: one built, the other abandoned.

For some people, Women’s History Month is filled with social and political significance, and who could deny it? But it also has a deeper meaning which can be brought out through images.

Images have the potential to reach us on a deeper level that’s beyond words, and such is my purpose here:

Looking Up to Women – A122

Looking Up to Women – A117

Looking Up to Women – A078

The beauty of art is that both artist and beholder have tremendous freedom: The artist is free to explore his or her highest vision; the beholder is free to interpret what the artist wrought.

I hope that in viewing these images, you have an artistic, aesthetic, or spiritual experience of the highest order. But if you prefer to make sense of these images from a historical, social, or political perspective, we can do that too! We will have to come down from our lofty perch and wrestle with ideas… Continue reading →

Celebrating Black History Month with images inspired by Romare Bearden

Images speak much more deeply than words. That’s something I’ve become keenly aware of this past year. So much so that I’m tempted to present these images with no accompanying words — but I might get punished by the Googlebot, which may dislike posts consisting solely of images. When did we fall into the trap of writing for Google instead of each other?

Anyway, one of the artists I’ve been studying is Romare Bearden, who made fantastic collages which were like nothing seen before. Collage and assemblage were innovations in early 20th century art, but Romare Bearden adapted them to his own unique style and modes of expression.

The word “study” has a certain professorial feel to it. What artists actually do is identify with different people’s experience. I grew up listening to a lot of blues and jazz, and trying to pick it up on guitar. In ways some people might not understand, the images below come from my lived experience, and from identification. But ’nuff said. Here are 18 images based strongly on the work of Romare Bearden. I’ve also incorporated the influence of Pablo Picasso, Franz Klein, and Heinz Edelmann. Right-click to open each image in a new tab at 1024×1024. There’s also a slideshow at the bottom.