Psyche

The background references three of my favorite artworks: George Caleb Bingham’s “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri,” Peter Doig’s “100 Years Ago (Carrera),” and Doug Barber’s “Ricky D."

We read left to right in the west, so imagery moving the opposite direction appears to move slowly to us. Everything in this painting that can move is headed toward the left except the hawk within the female figure. Humanity has been moving in the wrong direction in regard to protecting nature. It has felt slow, but suddenly it feels as if the affects are getting precipitously worse, speeding up to an alarming rate while we each continue to drift along alone. This painting is entitled, “Psyche,” because although it speaks to the environment it also speaks to each of us as individual minds. We are all pieces of nature and we are facing an existential crisis within and outside of our bodies. The man in the background appears at once a threat and as vulnerable, afraid.