I greatly believe in the Yin/Yang theory. This is an Asian theology which teaches balance in life is what makes it all plausible and enjoyable. There is a time for everything and everything has a time. We need work as well as play activity and rest. As artists we all know this to be true. There is a time to think what to paint as well as time to create work. One without the other leads invariably to mediocrity and confusion, which we are drowning in today; politically as well as socially.

Society is experiencing the results of too much work, too much drive, too much ambition. This is why the world is in the state it is in now. We are being fed every day, in newspapers and on television ads, that we need more of everything. We can't handle what we have now effectively. It saddens me when I read the newspapers or watch broadcasts designed to obfuscate information. It is getting harder to know the good guys from the bad guys.

 Americans work more hours than any other culture on earth, including the Japanese. We happily give our employers 60 to 80 hours a week without any objection. We won't need despots pushing us in the coming future. We will do it all by ourselves. We have already lost the fundamental beliefs in a Yin/Yang theory. Success, money, fame, wealth have become the catchwords in everything we do.  We are not rewarded for doing anything for the love of it, for the pure pleasure and satisfaction; for the truth of the process.

The one truth in my life is my art. It is the one place I can still strive for a truth. It is the one thing in which I seek the truth; the one constant.  It’s hard to lie in painting. If you do, it leads to bad work. If you are an artist worth your salt, there is no faking it and you know when a lie is being painted.  Artists have painted propagandistic works throughout history, but they are obviously lies which can be picked up easily and recognized as such by everyone. Great works of the past have told this truth.

For instance Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Guernica by Pablo Picasso, May 3^rd, 1808 by Goya and not the least of which was Conspiracy of Batavians under Claudius by Rembrandt. There are many more, most of which have lost meaning for us through time and neglect.  Art has the potential to heal, raise one up, open our eyes, and connect us to the sublime, to soothe us and bring comfort and offer us the truth.  If we encourage art, offer more teaching, allow it back into our schools and place it in the forefront of our thinking, we can again use art to bring together a more positive reason for being; discovering the Yin Yang of life, the balance in nature we have lost in humanity.