Burden
Burden 8X8 Inch
Acrylic on Canvas
As an artist, one of the essential inspirations for my art has to do with the human condition,
And in my pursuit of my artistic endeavors, one of my goals is to convey what the human condition means to us in our own personal lives, and how we can become more self-aware of these conflicts and the benefits of it
So what I’m gonna do is create a series of works that represent symbols and words that associate with parts of this condition. I believe that we underutilize or misunderstand the weight and the nature of symbols in our world, and I want to capture and emphasize the meaning of these symbols through my works
And today, we are focusing on the word burden
Background of the Subject
As I’ve stated before a lot of my work fights and battles with different ideas including philosophical theological and reason, and in that burden comes up a lot growing up in a christian society as I have and eventually taking up this lifestyle in my own life we are taught to pick up our own cross our own burdens and that’s exactly what I wanted to portray, today we see there cross as a symbol of Christianity yes but some see it just as a everyday object no longer do we treat the cross as the symbol it was seen as to the early church and the romans at the time, the. Cross was seen at the time ass a death deserving only for slaves and for those who had no honor like the thief on the cross, on matter of fact some in the early church depictions of Christ decided to not show it at all this was because of this burden the cross held that is now in today’s society become washed down, one thing that I like that the Catholic Church does and also the orthodox is reveal the cross as a crucifix with crest still displayed on it, in my opinion this does bring us back to the idea of the burden of it
And I wanted to portray this by showing a man who is carrying his own cross, the heart weight of what we believe in. It can be a burden like that cross (if we don’t factor in the grace that we receive if you are a believer), it’s meant to reflect the universal struggle of endurance, sacrifice, and the quiet dignity found in hardship. The swirling background of red and gold is meant to reflect the idea of finite and infinite relationships to each other, something that many of us, whether we like to admit it or not, weigh on our hearts and minds. What am I doing this for? What is the meaning of my life? These all reflect the inner turmoil that we all share and the very presence of transcendence; this tension is a thin line between despair and hope
Through color and form, burden speaks to a paradox of struggle, that within the heaviness lies the possibility of transformation, and within suffering the seeds of redemption
