Envy • Gluttony • Capitalist Greed • Lust • Pride • Sloth • Genocidal Wrath • “I Can’t Breathe” • Padlocked, No Sanctuary • Pax Imperator • The Fog of War • Global Warming • Amphisbaena • De-Industrialization & Rebirth • Eyes On and Skating Over the Holy Trinity • Marching, Mourning No More • Denmark Rising • Follow each of these links to read more
Artists Statement
Over the centuries writers and artists have turned time and again to the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins first identified by 4th Century Christian monks (the Church’s cops). In his Inferno, Dante Alighieri, pointed to the spiritual transgressions of Greed, Lust, Pride, Gluttony, Wrath, Envy, and Sloth. In his epic poem The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer elaborated further. In our time filmmakers have often returned to one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins to develop stories with dark, lurid, or moral themes. This series of 17 pieces composed mostly of digital composites is fabricated from original still shots made from movie trailers, news footage, and live videos published on YouTube and combined in highly original ways to examine the Seven, especially as they relate to contemporary social turmoil and upheaval. By shooting stills of moving pictures textures and effects are achieved — motion blur, overlaid frames, moirés, raster scan aliasing, stair-stepping, and pixilation that add to the interest of these composites. The piece anchoring the series, “Genocidal Wrath,” was produced in 2008 and selected for inclusion in a group show, Saligia, at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. After visiting Jamie Wyeth’s 2016 retrospective in Brandywine, PA, which included seven paintings of seagulls to examine the deadly sins, I decided to complete the series originally contemplated in 2008. The series was exhibited twice. First at Art Plus Gallery in West Reading, PA, in 2016 and again at Clay on Main, in Oley, PA, in 2017. Two completely new pieces were included in the Clay-on-Main exhibit: “Marching and Mourning No More” and “Denmark Rising.” “De-Industrialization and Rebirth” was heavily reworked and retitled.