On Creating the Painting 'Broken World'

Broken World really occurred accidentally, without conscious thought or plan. I was wanting to experiment on a fairly new kind of paper for me, a tinted, finer-tooth paper that worked well with pencil, and responded differently to paint than the heavy white paper I often use, and thought of making a landscape. As I started to lay out the painting, it quickly took the shape of something stormy and unsettling. I followed these instincts and worked intermittently on the piece over a few months. These were troubling months. I began to work on this piece during the 2024 US presidential campaign and completed it right after the Trump inauguration. During that time, the world news was horrifying. I had seen daily newscasts of catastrophic destruction in Gaza and the Middle East. At one point, events suggested the possibility of a wider war, potentially involving Lebanon and Iran. In Syria, the Assad regime was toppled, with news reports displaying evidence of that regime’s cruelty and depravity. All of this was the work of Strong Men dictating the fate of others. Ukraine continued to fight for its independent existence. In my mind, the United States faced the menacing threat of re-electing a corrupt, cruel and destructive would-be despot. Adding to all of this was a series of worldwide climate catastrophes including floods, fires, droughts, hurricanes, and earthquakes, all causing terrible damage and suffering. During this time in the United States, a community of artists was washed away by floods resulting from a major hurricane in Asheville, North Carolina, and later a series of fires in Los Angeles California destroyed whole neighborhoods.

The first images in my painting were a gathering of people, a gun, a car, lines suggestive of toppled buildings, a body, blood, a fire, someone on a stretcher or table, a house, and some images of life: an animal, a tree, a bush, a flower. My initial strokes suggested a number of these things, and some just seemed to appear from the li