Male & Female

Clash between Titans Oil on canvas 48" x 48"	Dionysus Cuts the Circle Oil on canvas 48" x 60"	The Four Muses Oil on canvas 48" x 48"	Siamese Organism Oil on canvas 36" x 36"
Oratorio Oil on canvas 36" x 36"	Divided by Her Oil on canvas 36" x 48"	Adam and Eve Oil on canvas 40" x 48"	Hieros Gamos Oil on canvas 36" x 36"
The Dancing Swans Oil on canvas 36" x 48"	Euclid's Corpse Oil on canvas 48" x 60"	Tragedy's Veil: Pygmalion's Fate Oil on canvas 50" x 75"	Dual Desires Oil on canvas 36" x 36"

This series of paintings was inspired by an early childhood experience.  I was four years old and had just completed my first 'realist' picture.  Rendered in crayon, with the childish scrawl of a toddler, it was a simple drawing consisting of two mountains and a bright, yellow sun in between.  I also remember that my playmates liked it, which gave me a feeling of accomplishment.

So, with this newfound confidence, I continued to draw this very same picture - over and over - while refining the contours, enriching the colors, and trying to make both mountains as identical as possible.  In hindsight, I must have believed that the more alike the two mountains appeared, the more refined my technique was, and thus, the better my picture.

As I continued to make this drawing, I soon achieved a level of symmetry that was very good (at least for the young child that I was).  I remember spending countless hours coloring each mountain so that they were as identical as my dependable crayons could manage.

Then one day something startling happened.  One of my preschool teachers looked at my picture and said, "That's a very good picture, Albert.  But in nature, mountains are seldom the same."  My mind traced over every mountain my mind had ever seen - no two were ever the same!  The same idealized notion of symmetry I faithfully pursued now suddenly felt so untrue.

But what was I to do?  I needed to develop other criteria.

So, impassioned by this bit of newfound wisdom, I began drawing the same picture, just as I did before – over and over.  Only now, I never made the mountains the same. How hard this was at first.  Each time, I readjusted the size and shape of each mountain so that each was unique in its own way.  Yet somehow, I could never entirely let go of what seemed like a natural inclination toward symmetry.

*

The sun has long ago faded away from my picture; the two 'mountains' remain, and I now think of them as Male and Female. Organic and with a life of their own, they stand uncertain, yearning for an absolution that once was.

And yet they continue to breathe....