The Holy Cost
2002

Reality creates an image, the image reveals a truth. Inconstant, absurd, and indefinite images surround us, seeking our participation to validate in the Universal their truth, and ours. They initiate a process of introspection, provoke conviction, assail contempt, frustrate opinion and challenge belief only to confirm Truth. Images of Truth we are.

What is the Truth? Where is the Truth? Sometimes the Heart hides it, the Mind blinds it, the Will refuses it, Self-Interest mutates it, and complacent Morality destroys it. Isn't time yet to cease allying Truth with a pragmatic moral reason to exploit and exterminate those who are different, the Other? Can one be God's Chosen One if one is not a presence and manifestation of God's love, justice and mercy? How much meaning and unity and sacredness humanity brought to a suicidal, dismembered and fallen world?

Schism and division run deep in humankind. The mind is trying perpetually to explain and find itself through duality, conflict and resolution. Individually and collectively we live in discord. Are we reconciled to ourselves to comprehend that the Other is in us? From our division sprouts a vision, a deep yearning for unity that cannot be achieved if forgiveness and truth are defiled by prejudice, double standard and self-justified morality.

Through my images I'm walking a path of reconciliation, searching for unity in my understanding of Hope and Fear, Mind and Heart, Body and Soul, Male and Female, Justice and Self-Interest, Power and Fragility, Truth and Falsehood, Sacred and Profane.

I found in me saints and sinners, martyrs and murderers, marginal and elite. Every stone has been turned so I may be confirmed in the realization of the Oneness of Life. How can I recognize and care for the poor and broken in you if I am not capable of discovering, recognizing and receiving the poor and broken in me? My segregation and refusal of you is the very truth of my self-alienation and division.

Many of theses paintings will flip and reverse any stand you take. They will claim and defend its opposite. They are testimonies of our self-absorption and incapability of recognizing the Other in one's Self. They challenge you to take a stand then to dare adopt a different truth, that of the Other, so your truth may become whole.

We are the Holy Cost. When Deception and Falsehood seem on the verge of triumph, all my hope and belief is that Truth will prevail and set humankind free, free to be unified, free to be one, free to be love.