This is an ink drawing titled "Capitulation" I created this about 2 months ago. I chose the title, to make reference to the sometimes overwhelming need to surrender. Many times we feel completely overwhelmed by all that is happening. You can feel completely drained with trying to just live in today's modern society. Pressure is mounting from every angle. As the true nature of our world is being revealed it is staggering to the senses. Corruption, greed, and control, seem to take the driver's seat over love, compassion, and helping our fellow man. I am in complete overload, most of the time, as I try to establish just why it is we allow our world to be this way. The fact of the matter is to me, the vast majority of us "common folk" are hard working, sincere, kind hearted people. We believe that our morals are sound, our perceptions correct, and our feelings true. We try to play by the rules as established, in order to make a better place for us and our children. We want so desperately to believe in the power of good! We are trained to think evil is wrong and that we must overcome the evil with acts of purity, and goodness. Or sometimes we rationalize that it's okay to fight evil with evil. What capitulation is trying to say, in symbolic imagery, is this place is comprised of a duality of existence. And only to the extent that both energies are balanced is the experience either engaged in or denied. Think about it. How fully engaged in our world are we? Do we realize the extent of our give and take in this world. Capitulation represents the surrender of all thoughts, emotions, and consciousness to the pursuit of learning the exact nature of who and what we REALLY are! It is my way of saying, the most important thing to me is truth, be it good or bad, positive or negative, right or wrong. That's me sitting in the middle, in a half fetal half meditative position, contemplating truth. My dual connection through my DNA representing my inside world, to the outside world and back again. A perpetual cycle of give and receive, life and death, the alpha and the omega. The gas mask I'm wearing represents many different things. Most importantly, my imperfect thinking, my falling prey to my own illusions, my inability at times to balance the energies. My erroneous, assumption that all things poisonous come from outside of me, forgetting the outside world is a projection of our collective inside worlds. Also the need to hide my identity behind a mask, thus at times hiding my own nature from myself, or symbolically being afraid to integrate the shadow self. Despite all of the spiritual coming of age struggles, the end result is a new born self, taking shape in between the new DNA strands that emerge as a result of integration of the dualistic nature. A lively little bugger, already climbing up his own source of life in the never ending pursuit of truth! I hope you enjoyed a little behind the scenes take on my motivation for my artwork. As it's own piece, it can take on whatever meaning you need. As an experiment I am going to look it again 6 months from now, and rewrite it's symbolic meaning. If anyone would like to share what the piece means to them I would be thrilled to hear from you! May you all be blessed, loved, and protected as you live out your lives in these crazy times! Take care.
