You Wanna Know? Fine, I'll Tell You

  Since I posted this piece last week, I've been inundated with questions as to what it means.  I've tried to explain it in short form, but apparently short form doesn't work. 
​     I'll begin this explanation by stating the obvious; art really is in the eye of the beholder and what one person sees may be completely different than another.  We all come "coloured" by our own experiences, thoughts and feelings.
​     First and foremost, for me, this was just a really fun piece to paint.  My mind, and in particular, my imagination, is a weird and wonderful space, full of the bizarre.  When I let it loose, this is the result.   I get really jazzed when someone likes pieces like these and when they love it so much they collect it and hang it on their wall!  Why?  Because it's so fiercely original.  You won't find another like it, and really isn't that what art is supposed to be?  Without the original what would we have?  Well, we'd have the same old shit.
​   "But Carl," I hear you saying, "you haven't told me what it means yet."  Okay, okay, fine, onto the "meat of the matter."  True confession time, when I was painting, I was just playing around, having fun, the interpretation came after I looked at it and then I did a kind of retrospective look at my mood when I painted it.  I called it White Dove, as you know.  And as you also know, the colour white and the dove are international symbols of peace and love.  The thing is, there's a lot of talk about peace and love, a lot of lip service, if you will.  And you know where I see this lip service coming from?  From organized religion, not any one in particular, let's just say the major ones, or a majority of them.  They do all this yacking about love thy neighbour, peace, etc., but then the spend an enormous amount of time pointing fingers, identifying one or more of the other groups as the enemy to unite their followers in a common cause... us against them.  Why does there have to be an us and a them?  To me, to speak the language of love and peace from one side of your mouth, and that of hatred out of the other is the very definition of hypocrisy.  Just sayin'  Or maybe it's just a really cool painting to look at.  ;)

---