Rifkin: Human nature, the fate of civilization

There are ideas here that will challenge you, challenge us all. If you are a thinking person, and have a little time, watch this video.

Painting: Spacious No. 3: The Dry Lands

These mountains, rising in the distance under an expanse of sky, began their existence looking like scenery on the planet MARS. The underpainting I used for this oil-on-canvas-board scene was cadmium red.  You can see it clearly in the stage on the right. The main shapes of the mountains and the road line were immediately laid in with a soft cloth. I learned this technique when I went to a SCANart.org demonstration where a painter used it to build  a flower painting.  The red was hard to give up though, so this painting ended up as a Southwestern sort of scene.  I thought the colors were off, but a friend who'd lived out west told me this is how the mountains look at a certain time of year.  I'm not positive that I'm through with it.  I have terrible urges to add items to the foreground such as a rusty pickup, a gates, an oil derek, a wagon wheel, an OKeefe-eske skull, or an antique gas pump, or aburro, etc. etc - all the usual Western sterio-typical items. I am trying to resist this urge.

One thing I like about this painting is a funny effect the sky has in different light. Sometimes the clouds almost seem to have a depth, I think from the layering of blue and white that I used. Sometimes it looks like it must be raining over the mountains. Sometimes it looks like dusk, and there is a city on the other side of the mountains - giving off a glow.  It's quite odd. And I am not sure if I could reproduce it.

It occurs to me that I have not posted Spacious No 2, nor Spacious No 1 - so I guess I am ahead of myself somehow.

Painting: The Riptide Within aka Brain Chemistry

UPDATED WITH NEWER VERSION OF THE PAINTING in Feb 2011

A human being, torn in multiple directions,  struggles but is unable to break free!  To me this is a visual representation of how I felt the greater portion of my early adult life: caught in a subtext of hormonal machenations, fighting overwhelming emotions. It's inspired by the mood swings of my youth... So much of what we are is about brain chemistry and DNA.  Studies of identical twins separated at birth are quite bewildering. Some marry women with the same first name and buy the same style of eyeglasses. Yet nurture and experience alter the brain as well, alter our paths. The brain, once thought immutable rewires itself, its chemistry can change.  So much is still unknown...  This is an oil painting on canvas board. It was begun around 1990 and finished late last year.