Angels

When I studied philosophy at UCSD, I was startled to discover a fondness for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose grand project was the attempt to make Aristotle’s analysis of being fit into the framework of the Christian universe and to make the Christian hierarchy work within the structural constraints of Aristotle’s analysis of how things worked. Some of this fit together quite easily. And some elements caused problems. Angels, for example. His solution was to consider each angel as its own type of being – its own species. That meant that angels couldn’t talk to each other. But angels could talk to God. And angels could talk to Man. But angels couldn’t talk to each other. And it was this uniquely strange existential situation that captured my imagination. 

Imagine my surprise twenty years later when I’m sitting at my painting table in the bay window of my studio on Stockton Street and suddenly think, “I know! I’ll paint an angel!” My surprise could not have been greater, because, at that moment, I knew exactly how I wanted to present this existential quandary.  

The linocuts and paintings from this body of work date from 2006 – 2008. The paintings are all acrylic on canvas.