What do you see? Do you see warriors in a Barbie hellscape with toxic overcast, harpies, Aztec phantoms, archers, swords, didgeridoos, and nauseating aurora borealis? Or do you see a 2" glass jar that was used to mix fluorescent tempera paints, dried, with gratuitous dendrites?

Mixed media by me

Acrylic on canvas 100x75

My newest painting...

This painting surely has many meanings. Right now, I see control in it. Control of emotions and feelings... sometimes we try to catch or stop something, yet it still finds its way.

Time. "Time slipping through one's fingers." Many people cannot live in the present. Neither can I. I suffer from frequent disconnections from my body and the present.

And one more meaning. 4 streams flowing out of the hand. This number appeared in the painting "Standing od the Edge of the Defense wall". There, trees represented the family I came from. I think this painting is about trying to stop the huge current (trauma) to protect my current family. However, the current is so big that the psyche cannot catch it all, and it affects them too. But it's no longer a current, just a small stream...

Fun fact: the genus Bombus (bumblebees) evolved in the Himalayas during a period of global cooling (big! fuzzy!) and then crossed over to the Americas over a land bridge across Beringia during the Miocene Interchange around 20 million years ago. In other words they are basically the bee version of woolly mammoths — but did it first by 19 million years so woolly mammoths are basically the elephant version of bumblebees.

Another fun fact: bee wings generate a positive static charge with friction and then transfer it to the (negatively charged) flowers they visit...they can tell if another bee has visited a flower in the last couple of minutes because they sense changes in the flower's electrical field! Super effective way to avoid competition for nectar that results in more effective pollination. Nature is rad.

Just painted this for a solo show in Santa Fe while thinking about how psychedelic ergot has been growing on flowers since the Cretaceous Period and therefore bumblebees have always, always had to watch where they sip.

16” x 20” — acrylic on canvas

#savethebees