Electrique

CLICK HERE TO ZOOM IN ON DETAIL (2015) There's a scene in the 1994 movie Frankenstein where Victor and Elizabeth are on a mountainside and Victor is setting up for a scientific experiment. He plants a metal rod in the hill right before a storm cloud passes over. They ground themselves around the rod and a bolt of lightning strikes it, imparting electricity into the earth and all around them. "How do you feel?" Victor asks. He reaches his hand out to Elizabeth, who holds out her hand. A stream of electricity passes between them. "Alive!" she exclaims. When it comes to the electricity created in the human body, the energy source creating it is chemical. It's the source that keeps our hearts and minds firing. This energy is often referred to as being the handiwork of "God". But perhaps this internal operating current *IS* "God"; a cosmic charge surging through us on its way to changing form --being neither created, nor destroyed. While it's rare for me to use the male form in "power" pieces, this project demanded an Adonis (demi-god). Adonis being the Hellenized form of the Phoenician word "adoni", meaning "my lord", thus the "God" reference comes full circle. I specifically used marker to create subtle waves or currents in the background and the subject's reflection offers up my often used theme of duality. By nature we're all multi-dimensional beings. In life it's necessary to embrace new experiences and ideas to shock us back into feeling alive when our voltage gets low. Find the jolt and recharge yourself. Reach out and touch it. In doing so, you just might experience "God". "I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul." -- Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric