This is a painting of our youngest grandson with my cat. It is based on a photo from several years ago, when Elijah was just a little boy and Skittles was just a kitten.
Original painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $250
SOLD
Mohandas K. Gandhi (Oct. 2, 1869 – Jan.30, 1948) became known as the Mahatma or the “Great Soul” due to his wisdom in leading the people of India in non-violent resistance against British colonial rule in the 1930s and 40s. Gandhi was a great teacher. He wrote many books to train the people for the inner discipline necessary for non-violent civil disobedience. He drew on the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed. He was regarded as deeply spiritual, yet he professed faith in no deity or particular religion, saying: “My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
Many claim that his path of non-violent civil disobedience ultimately failed to liberate India, since they resorted to violent revolution. The truth of the matter, however, is that it is unlikely they would have had the cohesion and discipline to do that as a unified people had he not trained them in civil disobedience first. His teachings were instrumental in instructing MartinLuther King, Jr., Simone Weil, and Dietrich Bonhoffer, thus, he impacted US civil rights, and the French and German resistance.
It was through Gandhi’s correspondence with two different actors in the resistance to Hitler that I first connected with him; that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany and Simone Weil in France. This led me to read his biography and most of his works. I had to learn a fair amount of Hindi to understand them. I came to truly revere the man and fully embrace his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience.
“I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, it is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200
This was a gift to my friend Ray Acker on the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, as Fr. Herman. I wrote the words of Gandhi, above, on the back of the canvas frame:
“My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
She was born in Kovno, Russian Empire, now Kaunas, Lithuania, on June 27, 1869, and died in Toronto, Canada, on May 14, 1970, having been exiled from the US. It was over thirty years ago when I read Emma Goldman’s memoir. She connected me to such a cast of great actors and thinkers in the world: Lenin, Margaret Sanger, Simone Weil, Mahatma Gandhi, John Reed, Sasha Berkman, Peggy Guggenheim, Jackson Pollock, Peter Kropotkin, and others. She was pivotal in my maturing to be a more compassionate person, and eventually a Socialist.
You can read her Wikipedia entry to get just a smidgen of the activities she was involved in and the lives she touched. She had been abused and misused by men all her life, starting with her father, yet she loved a few men and was loyal to a fault in her lifetime.
I set out to attempt to paint Emma smiling. I could not find a single extant photograph of her smiling, yet her most famous quote is when she said to V.I. Lenin: “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution!” This was when she arrived in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik revolution and wanted to celebrate, but Lenin told her, “Dancing is bourgeois!” I have been sitting across the room (about 11′ feet away) at eye level with Emma. She stares piercingly. She is both solid as a rock and on the verge of a flood of tears. This effect is quite accidental or subconscious on my part but it is quite haunting; and appropriate considering the abuse she had endured.
Painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage
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