Oil on silk. 17" x 28" Dated January 1999.
For information on this painting, see the text after the image.
Background: Vigilance represents a vast leap forward in the complexity of my painting endeavors. This painting has no specific genesis. It simply evolved from a desire to do a surreal piece that involved drapery and design. With time, the drapery and design aspect of the painting dwindled in favor of the message.
This painting required me to paint several things I had never even drawn before, especially the ruins, the gargoyle, the pedestal and the landscape. That certainly doesn't leave much. The result was three nice pencil studies that are shown elsewhere on this site.
An interesting observation about this painting is that it took me over six months to do. The day I finally realized I was finished, instead of being relieved and exalted, I felt slightly depressed. It was like the end of a relationship that was both good and bad, but none-the-less permanently ended.
Interpretation: This painting has two symmetric interpretations. The first can be considered as starting from the right of the canvas.
On the right is an opening into a chamber. Within this chamber a skull sits atop a pedestal. The skull here takes on the Renaissance symbology of intelligence. It's position on a pedestal within a chamber of golden drapery is meant to imbue it with importance and majesty. On the whole, the chamber represents the elegance and grandeur of high intellectual capability and achievement.
Yet sitting on the sill of the chamber window is a gargoyle, half inside and half outside. The gargoyle, beastly in appearance, green and threatening, represents the more base aspects of human nature, especially in the male. The subtly defined genitalia and the shape of the tongue are intended to allude to a sexual nature.
So in total, on the right of the canvas is the dual nature of the male. And advancing toward it, walking in a determined and forthright fashion, is an attractive and sensual woman. She carries an apple -- the symbol of Eve's temptation of Adam.. She carries a scroll that may contain anything, even falsehoods. She wears her heart in her cleavage, mixing sexuality and love for the viewer. She advances seemingly from some distant ruins. Was she the cause of those ruins, just as Eve stimulated her and Adam's ejection from Eden? And the scene is set in a desert.
The interpretation of the canvas from the right can be viewed as a threat to the intellect within the chamber, either through her or the gargoyle's errant behavior towards the woman. The former case reflects a view of my neurotic apprehension about strong women. The second view reflects my displeasure with the impediments that the distractions that my sexual proclivities sometimes places on achieving my intellectual goals.
Approaching the canvas from the left is the symmetric view. Here we might interpret the woman as strong and purposeful again. Yet, in this view, she carries nourishment symbolized by the apple, knowledge symbolized by the scroll and love symbolized by her exposed heart. She is unaware of what awaits her. The gargoyle again symbolizes the base sexuality of the male. But maybe its position symbolizes the inability of the intellect to fully control it. After all, there is nothing to prevent it from pouncing on the (innocent?) woman, for the chain around its neck is obviously broken from whatever may have once shackled it.
And what of the ruins in the left view? Could they represent the liberation of women from male-orient religious suppression?
I find the dual nature and the bi-symmetric view of the vigilance in this painting a delightful achievement.