#337 - Little Tank

12" x 12"  Oil on 2" cradled hardboard   $295

"Eyes I dare not meet in dreams"
-T.S.Eliot

This painting was done on the same 2" cradled hardboard that I am enjoying making and painting on lately and it is the second in my Color Scheme series (I'm planning on posting the third on Sunday/Monday). So, more of them to come.

And now some meandering (yes, I'd skip it)...

I like this painting, though, I don't know who the boy is or even if I like him.

Perhaps he is (as I was a long time ago) a young teen, scrawny, defensive and hiding his eyes. He's ever-wary of the present, but also looking to the past and the future. Wearing the trends of his time, wanting to fit in but never quite feeling at ease—apart from things because he's scared that the rug might be pulled out at any second.
…He doesn't realize he has forged his loneliness: He longs for deep intimacy (with god and man) but he also fears it, because all intimacy is temporary.

Loneliness is in the nature of the soul, because to be incarnate, by definition, is to be separate from God. Loneliness is the reminder, an umbilical cord to the earth, and a memory of paradise (the intimate place you are from).

So, this young hollow man lives guarded against threat or invasion, tensed for impact, and so lives hyper-vigilant for threat, but also looking, searching for what?
Hope? A sign? For safe ground to embrace (at last) with enough gravity that might pull him back down onto to earth, so that he might let go of what he cannot control, and finally fall asleep.

Little tank, all is safe in that nothing can be safe: all things are impermanent. Life is this misunderstood gift: It's just for a little while. Enjoy what you have been givin, while you can.

May serenity come to you little tank.

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