Floral Tyranny Emerging From the Underground (version 1)

There’s just so much going on with this piece that I don’t know where to begin. I’m embarrassed to observe that the orange poppy flowers unconsciously associate with Donald Trump’s red hair. I’m not a Trump supporter, so please don’t think that this piece is propaganda NIP (neuro-imagistic-programming) for his campaign. Also, don’t label me as a Hillary supporter. In no way do I support that prison industrial complex expanding, Goldman Sachs worshiping criminal. I must, however, explain that my unconscious mind sometimes produces things in my art and writing that seem to be contradictory or opposed to what my conscious mind thinks.

Like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump is a trending phenomenon in politics because he represents a figure that supposedly stands opposed to “the establishment.” The establishment, of course, represents people such as the Clintons and the Bushes. I personally still am not convinced that either one of these “rebel” politicians on the left or the right truly stand for the people of America and the rest of the world. Endless facts produced by the left and the right condemning one another can easily point out how neither Trump nor Sanders will right the wrongs inside and outside of America.

I personally like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, independence, and freedom. It’s hard to fathom that Emerson was actually an American philosopher. Americans of today are completely reliant on Washington’s politicians to make them feel better about themselves, to tell them how to tie their shoes, for paychecks, and to regain senses of security by bashing the other party’s side well enough into some kind of temporary submission through a centralized corporate-state merged media complex. I feel that Trump, and even Sanders, still represent the neurotic attachment Americans have to super-heroes developed by the film industry. No politician will ever be able to save anyone, regardless of party. Alas! But I’m talking to myself again. Anyway, at least I’m filling some space writing here that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fill at least.

I got interested in drawing poppies and doing something more with them in art projects this Spring when I saw them blossoming around in my neighborhood. Their orange-red insistence, when looking at them, is unmistakable. It’s like they want to say something no other flower can. Poppies are known for being a source of opium and opiates. There are many other species however, most of which have no opiate properties. According to official science, there are about 775 known species.

Because of the association of poppies and opium is strong in this image, I can’t help but notice that the stems of the poppy flowers extending from the green center look like hypodermic needles. I want to stop here and explain that in no way do I advocate heroin usage. I will strongly point out what I think the drive behind such addictive behaviors is however. Since heroin usage is trending in America currently, I think this is caused by peoples’ needs to feel free like a kid again; people want to escape the ______ reality they are surrounded with in an unfree, law imprisoned world. Drugs, in general, give people a physical and internal permission to be, feel, and act out being an innocent child again, because, certainly, the authoritarian authorities roaming the landscapes of America’s aging cities will never give anyone permission to behave questionably like a child again.

Because real freedom has been stamped out of the American spirit in favor of the world’s largest military, millions of laws, and directions on how to pick your nose properly, citizens have been relegated to unconsciously seeking ways to experience the freedom that is their natural heritage in some way again. Unfortunately, it would seem that politicians are the only ones who have the power to give citizens permission to feel their rage, and drugs are the only sources that allow them to feel their innocence and freedom again.

The mandelic vortices surrounding the bush of flowers look like they could symbolically represent storm clouds, suggesting a rainy season. New Mexico, a desert, has been getting rain recently. We are entering a season locals call “the Monsoon Season” here in New Mexico. Officially, it’s called the North American Monsoon System (NAMS)for the Southwestern region of the United States. It’s a season that lasts from about June 15th, to September 30th where we get lots of rain, and it’s more humid than the usual dry, arid climate of the Southwestern desert.

I find that this image has associations with the Burning Bush as it spoke to Moses in the Old Testament of the Western Bible. Moses asked the Burning Bush who it was, and it replied “I am that I am.” This, to me, simply means that God can be anything. Everything is ultimately one to me anyway. It’s just that existence decided to break apart into an infinite number of pieces in order to experience self-hood and other-hood. In the oneness, I don’t know who to blame for all the suffering of separation: Was it God or one’s self who decided to become separate? God or you? How would you know since there was no difference in the beginning? Anyway, the flowers surrounding the bush can be symbolic of all the colorful personalities that have sprung forth from the One.

In between all the colorful personalities, you can observe, if you look closer, what appear to be birds with their wings extended between the two rows of flowers. They look like they could be Baltimore Orioles. I had not intended this effect while creating the tree-shaped bush of flowers. They are quite fitting actors for a piece such as this since it is a natural Summer scene.

The stems of the flowers, and the blades of grass, forming a half-star formation coming up from the bottom of the picture to the middle left looks like it could be the body of a primordial beast arising from the bowels of the earth. The sky is a rich pastel, but a darker blue, suggesting that the time of day in which this scene is depicted could be approaching dusk, giving the setting a more mysterious quality. It looks like there are many insects in the sky, indicating the beginning of the Summer season. There are moths, beetles, flies, little spiders and gnats flying around. Though it looks like an approaching nighttime scene, this picture is overwhelmingly a Summer season picture.

The missiles, or flying insect looking projectiles issuing forth from the edges of the flowers, look like totem poles, indicating an native island tribe quality, or perhaps an Alaskan tribe quality. I get the idea of blowguns, too.

There’s an artsy, unique style and fashion store at the outdoor Albuquerque Uptown mall called Anthropologie that uses art works consisting of natural found objects, and other media, crafted into improvised, mimicked, animate and inanimate lifeforms, such as water bugs, tree stumps, and other things. These art works are installed and/or hung on the walls throughout the store. I have found myself to be particularly impressed by them, and the store as a whole. I have never seen any store like it ever before. I feel that this image has elements of that kind of style to it, but it still remains my own.

I know some artists feel that no idea, method, approach, or style is possessed completely by any one artist, but I must say that no two individuals are exactly alike on earth. From this, I conclude that an artist’s signature style is truly his or her individual style. Others can imitate, and they do; some even do a certain style better than the original artist, but they still will never truly be the artist who produced the original style or theme.