The title for my show opening July 14 at the West End Gallery is Self Preservation. The title also applies to the painting above, a 24″ by 36″ canvas, which is included in the show.

The title comes from how I have come to view the current state of this world over the past several years. Decades of insulating ourselves via the internet, content in our own little echo chambers where we are constantly pushed further away from others by figures hidden in the shadows of the web who profit by exploiting our division, have brought us to a state where misinformation is more prevalent that fact.

Where Belief, however unfounded it may be, has an equal value with truth.

Where every event is recorded with multiple sets of alternate facts allowing each person to justify their point of view and belief.

Where every word and sentence is parsed to detect which way that person leans in their belief.

Where intolerance is tolerated.

Where rational discussion has been thrown over for a constant uncivil cacophony of screamed biases and opinions, a virtual Tower of Babel where there is a constant sound and fury yet no one hears a word being said but their own.

It is a maddening time, one that truly challenges our sanity, personally and as a whole.

It leads me to the question: How does one weather such a time, hows does one hold on to what they see as their own truth– who and what they are at their core– without being swept up in the ill winds that rake this world?

What does one hold on to for self preservation?

I don’t know that I have an answer that applies to anyone other than myself. But it’s all I have and, for now, that will have to suffice.

Self preservation for me comes in the inner world I visit in my paintings.

I see it as a place where truth and belief come together. It is place where there is an inherent sense of rightness, of calm rationality, of harmony, and of little anger.

And it is without hatred or prejudice. While it is my world and it is a place of tolerance, excluding no one.

I am free in this world. Safe. At peace. Part of a universe that understands me, that hears my voice and responds to my prayers and desires.

Oh, I don’t have to be told how foolish it all sounds. I know that it is an escape from the harshness and insanity that the world offers us at the moment. But it is a world in which I have lived happily for many years, more sane and content than I ever was before that world came to be.

Perhaps that is an answer that will work for others– to find that inner world for yourself where you can periodically retreat, even for a moment, to experience calmness and a sense of self.

I don’t know for sure. I just know that is has been a place of self preservation for me for decades now.

Excuse me, I have to head over there now…

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Self Preservation opens July 14 at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.