Our Human Condition

ECCE HOMO  2003-2010

Collage, oil stick, bistre pigment wash on Stonehenge paper

28" x 20" (image size)

I am battling the tail end of a cold virus that has lingered for weeks.  The good thing is that it has allowed me lots of down time and time to play with my website and even attempt to write a blog for the first time in about a year...

Also, time to reflect.  It is the time of year for remembrance:  10 years since America was filled with war cries and started the Iraq war.  It is the time of Passover and the time of Holy Week.    A time to contemplate on our human condition...

I created the above piece over a period of 7 years.  I started it at the beginning of the Iraq war.  We were living in a community were most folks were very pro war.  So this was a way to process and deal with my own feelings.  I would collect the newspaper pieces and put them into a file then pull them out as the Spirit called me through the years to work more on this.

As you look at the bits, you can see a photograph of a 'mended' veteran's face, Abu Graib, a grieving woman dating back to the Haiti earthquake, and on and on.  As I finished the piece when our troops left Iraq in 2010, I became aware that what had started as an outlet to process the beginning of the Iraq war, over the years evolved into a statement about our human condition. 

I do not know how the quote "Love is the power behind non violence" ended up right at the place where the human heart would be in the crucifix figure...  "Ecce Homo".

May this week be a profound time for Christian, Jew and all of us searching for Divine Mystery.