Deux X Machina ::

2000-2005

This series of paintings demonstrates themes of the human condition, the emotions, contradictions, and anguish felt differently by each of us in our interior existence. At first glance, the situation of the figures inside of the cold, impersonal, and clinical environment seems disturbing. The pastel colors, and geometric decor of the room should evoke in us a feeling of peace. They soothe the psychological pain, which is as destructive as physical pain; however, this soothing is not quite complete.

The French poet Alphonse de Lamartine beautifully described this state of mind, “Man is a fallen deity, who remembers heaven.” This is deus ex machina, (God from the Machine), the suffering mind of man, isolated inside of a physical envelope. The machine is science, and materialism, imprisoning man. Seeking escape, and having no visible means of support, man projects himself apart from the physical, and the bonds he has with torment, this, the god of man, his interior world, is his only true soothing mechanism. If the goals of science and materialism are humanity and peace, then man finds these goals only after he has renounced science and materialism.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche stated, “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman - a rope over an abyss.” The possibilities for man to separate the physical and ideal, and also the link between them, puts mankind in the position of being a variable to himself, (thus the X - the mathematical variable, rather than ex - the proper Latin form of the phrase, in Deus ex machina), constantly struggling to find identity between what he actually is and what he would like to be.