Warning: Political Content



This is a photo I took in Toronto last year. I loved how, in the cities that I visited in Canada, everyone seemed to get along with each other, and was encouraged to do so. On fliers, posted anonymously on public fixtures, on official government posters, in videos on inclusiveness that were playing in the Montreal metro, I saw decency promoted as normal, and practiced widely. People who looked different from each other engaged in relaxed conversation.

Yesterday morning I went to a rally protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The rally was held at the courthouse. It was very hot and sunny, but there was a good turnout, and there were some effective speakers.

I was just looking, unsuccessfully, for a quote by the painter Philip Guston that I remember reading, about art and politics. I think that the quote was from around the time Guston was making his shift from abstract expressionism to the great cartoon paintings he did in the 1970’s. The Vietnam War was on, and Guston was wondering about the value of ‘adjusting a red to a blue’ in a painting, or something like that, when such terrible things were happening in the world.

I have had thoughts like that myself. Should I be talking about my trip to Amsterdam when my government is locking immigrant children in cages, for the “crime” of fleeing violence in their home country? Violence caused at least in part by repressive US policy? 

It is my right and my duty as an American to keep letting my government know what I think about what they are doing on my behalf. Doing so is a positive contribution to this country, and the world.


Here are some brief Philip Guston quotes on the value of art making that I did manage to find. See more at http://www.azquotes.com/author/6031-Philip_Guston

Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.

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