DREW GENTLE / ABOUT DREW GENTLE
In my art, I’m not trying to horrify or present a negative view of humanity ... actually quite the contrary.
As I work, coaxing the emerging figures hidden in the paintings to reveal themselves, I start to feel a tremendous compassion (love?) for the humanity within them. It’s a compassion that precludes any judgement of them. I just care.
We all have this “Miracle of Life” to deal with. What I see (feel) is their souls struggling with the disconnect between the beautiful transcendent souls we are born with and the adjustments, the hurts, actually; all the attempted accommodations we feel compelled to make with being in this life, where we are made flesh and therefore vulnerable.
I’m so, so much on our side in this struggle. Life is both incredibly hard, and incredibly beautiful!
Ah, humanity. The mystery. I do believe that it’s love, a love of this gift of life that we’ve been given, the wonderful, bittersweet, unfathomable spectacle of life laid out before us is all that saves us ....
As I work, coaxing the emerging figures hidden in the paintings to reveal themselves, I start to feel a tremendous compassion (love?) for the humanity within them. It’s a compassion that precludes any judgement of them. I just care.
We all have this “Miracle of Life” to deal with. What I see (feel) is their souls struggling with the disconnect between the beautiful transcendent souls we are born with and the adjustments, the hurts, actually; all the attempted accommodations we feel compelled to make with being in this life, where we are made flesh and therefore vulnerable.
I’m so, so much on our side in this struggle. Life is both incredibly hard, and incredibly beautiful!
Ah, humanity. The mystery. I do believe that it’s love, a love of this gift of life that we’ve been given, the wonderful, bittersweet, unfathomable spectacle of life laid out before us is all that saves us ....