I don’t know how to paint hell, but maybe I’ve set my sights to a much broader reality, one in which may never be possible to explain on a canvas in one solitary work. Though I must say Picasso seemed to have been able to come very close to it with his mural, Guernica. Ah, but Picasso I’m not.

Poetry is a medium that may be better suited for what I seem to want to capture and document.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I trust I will work through this, be it pigment or poetry.

I understand how you feel. For social artists, we are driven to express the rhetoric and atmosphere of war through visual means, and we are assaulted by the current climate which promotes war, embraces propaganda, and accepts the political nonsense as fact. Perhaps what you are seeking is not a visual representation of current events but a way to express the overall themes that have been a part of human history.

My article here states that it is unfortunate that the antiwar movement is only viable during a war, when the essence of being antiwar is not during a war but even during times of so called “peace.” If society was antiwar, perhaps then we would not have events that lead to war, even those “isolated” as this past weekend. Because, as you understand, it is all a form of war. And it is time for man to break that cycle.

Good luck in your quest, finding the right expression for what we feel as artists can be both bliss and hell.

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Jude Rouslin (excuse all typos and errors)

And art and music can often reveal more about war and peace than any demonstration.

To other people who want to write for the blog, just send me an email and I’ll create an author account.
- Shelly