Feingold Gallery: 1967

arresting image-- excellent art. my first responses are formal: what is it made of? how big is it? how would it look in person?

my second responses are personal: was the artist born in 1967, or was this the year of a great, life-defining trauma? and if the artist feels this entrapment, grief, and unmet demand constantly, as an essential state of who s/he is, the only possible response on my part is concern: is the artist seeking to dissolve this anguish using medications that just don't work well enough (a problem for many people that leads to death)? Is the artist self-medicating with non-prescription drugs that interfere with psychotropics (if those have been offered)? My own experience is that medication, even in a sober person, won't work alone; one needs support--friends, counselor, but most of all a commitment to well-being and a plan to develop self-care and self-trust as absolute priorities. Again, my own experience leads me to recommend some study of Buddhism in its simplest forms. The basic Dharma speaks in a special way to those of us who have experienced anguish as an essential state: first, all life is dukkha (often translated as 'suffering'); second: suffering is exacerbated by desire; third: desire can be minimized (fourth:) if one follows the 8-fold path. I think this is a compassionate and practical teaching for the anguished, so long as the 8-fold path is not seen as a series of pitfalls, but gentle tools that can help one become mindful of the ways we all contribute to our own suffering when the immediate cause of our pain is obscure.