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Backstory "Tear that painting off the wall! You can do better than that, throw it away and start a new painting" that's what I thought after I painted this the first time. Instead of tearing it off the wall, I decided to paint over it. So the second time after finishing, I thought, "you have to be kidding me, that is what you call better?!" It was that heavy intense voice that lives in the privacy of our minds, so I listened to him, and I painted it a third time. Finally, I was satisfied. That third painting is the one that you see here. Not only are there three layers of this painting, but the original version also had wings.
This piece is now part of a dream come true. I had been traveling around the world for three years, working any job that I could find. When I finally moved to America, I stayed with my folks for a month before moving to San Francisco. My dad gave me a ride to the airport. As we got in the car, he turned the engine. On the radio immediately came a voice in an interview about the newly redesigned de Young Museum in San Francisco. I secretly began dreaming of showing my artwork there one day. This painting will now hang in The de Young Museum. Fifteen years later, it is now a dream come true. This painting will be on view to the public through the fall and winter of 2020. Statement The artworks of We All Believe explore human's ongoing struggle in our mastery over nature. The flowers allude to our conquest over plants and the temporal nature of being. This conquest has bent the trajectory of our existence towards a god-like potential exemplified in the ongoing struggle to overcome disease, extend life, and eventually merge humans with our self-created technologies.
These paintings look at the threshold upon which we now stand. Human's ongoing survival no longer solely depends on technology and its ability to overcome nature but on our ability to overcome the creative and destructive nature within ourselves. |