My Lady — Hive

'My Lady' completed at the end of 2016

Oil on Canvas
48" x 36"
Original is available for sale, contact me for inquiry info at NeeleyArts.com

Before you read my thoughts on this painting, would you tell me your thoughts on this painting?

My thoughts on this painting

Trump recently uttered in an immigration meeting, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" It's not surprising that the ape in office lacks familiarity with The New Colossus.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

As it is with art, Trump supporters see this painting and also immediately relate to it, thinking it must be about the Obama Administration. My head hits the desk as I search for words.

In Art, you cannot win. The artist doesn't get to decide what the viewer gets to experience. It's hard to accept because when you're an artist you get to be a god in your own world, you create and control everything that happens in the picture plane. It doesn't matter how well you manage to place the symbols, the colors, how real you make the sky appear, or how expressive you make the figures, you still can't tell people what to think. And plenty of viewers don't care what the artist thinks. In the end, it is the collectors who decide what the art is worth and where it will go from there. It's a depressing fact, I know.

I don't know what to say for my country and I don't know what to say for myself. Many of my loved ones are Trump supporters and they would tell me not to feel the way I do feel. "Don't be a sore loser." "That's too bad." "Give him a chance, you'll see. He may surprise you." "Stop whining." "Complaining never solved anything." and on and on.

Even the Trump supporters thought his negative characteristics would change when he took office. But as they do with their religions, they manage to imagine reason and meaning and intention where there is none. They scrounge for his positive aspects, the time he stood with the Jews and stood for Israel will always trump the time he grabbed a woman by her crotch. But this painting is about Hillary too. Yes, there I said it. Had she won would we be better off? Alright, we might be I admit it. But we'd still be in the wrong hands.

I don't have the stomach for politics and I don't think you should need to stomach politics. The decisions we make about what to do with our tax dollars and how to collect those dollars, the decisions we make about how our children will be educated, about how our environmental policies will affect the future, about women having true control and ownership of their own bodies, about people having equal rights and civil justice, none of these things should be anything to stomach. They should be decisions we are proud of.

I hope that before I die, I hope that I will feel some pride for, at the very least, my own actions. I hope I can figure out what to do to leave the world better then I found it.

Is the world better off with this painting? No. No, it isn't.
Art is not enough.