The Virtues

KAIROS

KAIROS I didn’t want to just call this PRUDENCE 3, so I looked all over for a word that captured the idea of the painting and KAIROS is the only one that fit. The ancient Greeks had 2 words for “time:” “chronos” referring to chronological or...

FOURTH CRUSADE

FOURTH CRUSADE The Virtue of Faith. Constantinople burns in the background….a chance to reread some history lessons.

EQUANIMITY

EQUANIMITY As with so many others, this is a virtue I feel a lack of in my own life. The figure is meditating that equanimity is found in the contemplation of the fullness of time. Against the truely immense span of time, ephemeral material gains are but trifles to be discarded...

GENTLENESS

GENTLENESS Not a classical Virtue, but based on observing my young son with our aging family cat. It’s how I hope we’ll care for all the earth’s creatures.

HUMILITY

HUMILITY The painting was originally subtitled “Poem By The Sea,” from a track on the WINDS OF CHANGE album by Eric Burdon and the Animals. The lyrics mention the clouds, wind, and sea and they helped me characterize this obvious Virtue.

FORTITUDE

FORTITUDE I got to thinking of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character John Carter of Mars….whenever it looked like the odds were hopeless and he had no options, his response was a defiant, “I still live!” As in all of the works in this series there are ammonite fossils,...

HOPE

HOPE I feel now that they are reflections upon the transient nature of reality and the fragility of life. Ideal figures carved from stone, even they are subject to age, accident, and injury… yet the worn stone will eventually weather into soil and become reborn as...

PRUDENCE II

PRUDENCE II Another take on what the ancient Greeks called “the Queen of the Virtues.” The one most essential to our collective future, yet the one least evident in human affairs. The red glass heart represents the lures of the material world, passion and the...

PRUDENCE

PRUDENCE The classical notion of Prudence is an important theme to me, as it was to the ancient Greeks: Possessing knowledge of the Past, and a desire and ability to order the Present so as to bring about a more ideal Future.

PATIENCE

PATIENCE All the virtues represented in my series of the same name are ones that seem to me to be in short supply today.

Pin It on Pinterest

Mastodon