Chiaroscuro

Suddenly a light appears in the gloom...

There is a lot of privilege involved in being able to do your work away from the noise and anxiety of the outer world. I get to shut the doors, turn on the lights, fire up some music, and pretend to be in far places in peaceful times.

The anxiety, the darkness still creeps in, of course. It’s hard to avoid it. A few sparks of hope have lit the way (pandas in Pandiego!) but the drive to force Joe Biden to step down from his campaign has been particularly hard to find any hope in. I would venture no one except Biden and his wife know how accurate the assessments of his ability are. I don’t know, and I doubt you know either.

I have grown to trust Biden in the years since he took office. But I too started to see the difference in how he speaks from eight or ten or even four years ago. What I find hard to reconcile are the “journalists and pundits” who took it upon themselves to make the news rather than to report it. Yes, his colleagues in the House and Senate and Cabinet were more in a position to assess his capabilities. And Washington has more leaks than my gardening boots, but it is hard to discern any benefit to anyone beyond more clicks, more spin, bigger scoops, more self promotion, in revealing what was happening behind closed doors.

Tell Me My Future
Oil on Linen
12” x14”

There seemed to be a push to not only shove Joe Biden out of the way, but also to side-step Vice President Kamala Harris, because…? The scenarios that were being floated around the punditsphere were more likely to bring chaos and a T**** 2nd term (which might never end, with all the disaster/destruction that Project 2025 would bring.) An open contested convention? Letting Obama, Clinton, and…I don’t know… Captain Kangaroo choose our candidate? I’m old enough to remember the 1968 DNC convention. It did not end well.

But maybe Joe Biden still has plenty of marbles left to make sure we don’t end up in the circular firing squad that seemed to be our eventual fate. This is purely my speculation, but I think as he was wrestling with his decision, he was also working out how he could do as much good for the party and country he loves and inflict as much disadvantage on T**** in taking this very consequential step.

By waiting until after the RNC Fascist Fest, and Felon Forty Five’s disastrous VP pick and unhinged speech, by announcing on Sunday after the Sunday morning talk shows were over, ON TWITTER, and then immediately endorsing Kamala Harris, he derailed the impending clusterfuck that some people seemed to want.

Strange Bedfellows
Mixed media on Panel
11” x14”

At that point it was up to Harris to sink or swim, and she has executed a perfect dive off the high dive, raising more money in a 24 hour period than anyone, much of it from small dollar, first time donors. She has landed in a tornado of energy, of excitement, and dare I say it…HOPE?

There has not been a lot of hope as I watch T**** and his evil enablers position themselves to take down every right we cherish, force women into servitude and submission, force gay people back into the closet or worse, force immigrants into camps and countries they have no more connections to, bankrupting the country in the process.

But now….
I see light emerging, along with the hope that I feel when I think about Kamala Harris being our first female President.

And that is what Chiaroscuro means to me: finding light, finding hope, all emerging from the darkness.

Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere
Mixed Media on Panel
11” x14”

My exhibition Chiaroscuro opens July 30th, with an opening reception on Saturday August 3rd, 2024 at the Rob Schouten Gallery in Langley WA on Whidbey Island