"If I wasn't hyperbolic, I'd be pretty-darned regular... I'm thinking."

Big, bluish and lavender marble in the sky. Prismacolor orbescence encompassed by the vapors of Midas. Ball of rainbow, sphere so bright, first circular color mass surrounded by swirling golds and pinks I see tonight.

I don't think any of these are workable titles, though they are, indeed, thought provoking and generally titillating.

I think I'm in need of something sci-fi without being stereo-typical sci-fi, without reeking of goinky, Nimoyian-Shatnerian StarTrekian sci-fi. I need something, well, galactic, but subtle. Nuanced. You know, oxymoronical in its meekness and its grandiosity. A tiny dose of largesse flavored by a powerful humility. I need to negate all sweeping generalizations, while committing to a particular judgement and predjudice. I need local and parochial on an enterprise, international level. Universal, geometrical, superlative mixed with the wry and sublime.

And why so important this title quest? Because people see things based on what they are told they should be looking for. Why do we do this? Because we are born with this propensity and taught to do this. Is this a bad thing? No, no it is not, or, at least not necessarily. Though without vigilence, this trait can be exploited in many not-so-flattering ways.

 

"Not all galaxies are spheroidal, but the best ones are" is primarily a composition of color. Twirling inward from the dark edges, rich browns and rusts blur into crimsons and lakes which in turn, swirl into golds and muted yellows. Spinning, almost emerging, from this primordial earthen-toned soup is the center-piece, a discus of purples and oranges and blue. If outerspace is this colorful, which by all means it very well could be (and most likely is), then there is indeed much to be learned from nature, much to be awed by, inspired and overwhelmed by.

Description, however, is a cheap tactic for avoiding having to delve into the semantics of a piece of art, the meaning of a piece of art, the content and soul of a painting.

At core in "...galaxies...", a twirling, expanding orb within the confines of a rectangular picture plane, is the statement that not only universes expand. Life itself expands. Thought expands. God expands. In a never-ending discourse of phenomenalogical childbirth --thesis slamming into antithesis producing synthesis, the chaos of sperm challenging the stasis of egg and producing something far greater than the sum of the initial two parts --we have an explanation of the All of the cosmos. The universe is about creation, expansion, growth, and becoming larger, greater, more profound. These are the parameters for what is Good, what is of God, what is in support of our role on this planet. Anything that runs counter to this "creative" act is against the will of the Everything. Reflections of this mechanism, this divine imprint, this holy process, can be seen everywhere if we have but eyes to witness it. God truly is all around us, in us, and outside of us, depending of course, upon one's definition of God. To me, God is all about creating. Woman, Man, Child. Unbelievably simple, unbelievably difficult to apply and live by.

And, on the other hand, we might simply have a nice, balanced, colorful watercolor pencil on good paper painting by a Chicago artist with a misplaced sense of the sacred and profane.

What can YOU see?