There are times in life when one comes to realize that the mind and soul are far in the future, even though we are always physically present. When I completed my undergraduate studies at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2004, I rented a studio on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and began painting whatever came to mind. I also visited Paris twice and promised myself that I would make studies of the Eiffel Tower out of fascination. There were lots of studies (most have been sold), and I would, on occasion, open my studio to other artists for group gallery exhibitions under my name. My artistic focus was constantly on the aerial photos I took from the tower in Paris, and somehow my own ear got into the picture.
After spending many years as an apparel designer, I did not want to apply a fashion aesthetic to my rediscovery of fine arts. The instructors at SVA intimated that I was struggling with drawing, but I was not; I was merely researching a style of my own, away from classes and critiques. What emerged from this was something I called Abstractrealism. The term was not new, but it fit what I was trying to do with my oil paintings. Secretly, I was also studying the human anatomy in parts or portions at a time, along with the abstraction of industrialism in landscapes.
In my subconscious, I always struggled with my self-confidence around my mentors. Underneath all the thoughts and my awkward journey through life, I also discovered that incidents of racism had molded my subconscious and caused me to feel something internally dark.
The large canvas was stretched and completed at my Brooklyn studio in 2008. When the painting was complete at the end of August, I shared images with my leading art professor at SVA. She identified my struggles with racism and discrimination in the painting. Before that time, I could not see it in my own work. She also commented that she believed that the painting had sparked my journey into really making fine art.
Temptation, 2008, oil on canvas (54" x 80") by Stacy Stewart Smith (he, Him, His)
A personal perspective and prophetic view of the then political future and the climate of it in America today. It is a statement about end times fears, but also the prediction of a resurgence of American racial hatred of any race that can only begin in the heart. And no matter how small the amount of hatred (represented by a tiny noose), it always possesses the potential to grow into the gigantic and pervasive, especially in numbers. The large ear on the left, in daubs of Cadmium red and Rose Madder, is the viewer of this painting being asked to consider themselves and their own potential to hate. It is the moment we all experience. It is the red heat of internal anger. It is the anger that we do not speak, caused by the evidence of your own hatred or the recognition that you are the helpless target thereof. If fueled by power and directed at humanity, hatred can become a disgusting thing that can cause desolation. In such a case, the ear pictured is not an individual but instead the ideal of a country. In this painting, the darkened town below the tiny symbolic noose is rendered in cool Prussian blues under a sunset that signifies what happens when we pretend not to see the glowing colossus of our own creation. It is the moment when we are alone with the conception of our sin. For those whom this painting will offend, it is a call to ask oneself, why?
BLOG: Stacy Stewart Smith (he, him, his)
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Photo: AI generated
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