Story Behind "Don't Look Away" series
Mar 11, 2022
In stillness and meditation one does not look away. One does not look away from the carnage. One does not look away from the whole range of dark feelings arising within oneself. The Poles have an expression that "the only whole and open heart is a broken heart." From this bloody and broken ground these paintings have emerged. The Ukrainian people have won the hearts of the whole world through their fierce resistance for freedom and human dignity.
I have done three paintings in this series so far. They are done digitally on a computer and they are painted in the style of Australian Aboriginal artists to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude.
So be still. Don't look away. As Kim Stafford says in her poem, "Sunflower Seeds"
How many do you have?
Enough to line the roads?
Enough to giveto others so they can fill the fields?
Enough to plant in every bomb crater, bullet hole?
That would be too many.
If you have just one, one can spiral
into a thousand in a halo of gold.
Where will you hide it in the earth
so every seed may declare peace for
a survivor’s knees at a brother’s grave?
