A Vision for the future

I watched the news a while back and saw, the tremendous show of solidarity in Paris when around two million people took to the streets... and then I read Marianne Williamson's blog "How Terror Loses and Humanity Wins". Here is an excerpt from it: 
"A rally of 2 million people on the streets of Paris is a beautiful show of solidarity, ultimately even more so if it becomes a template for how we live our lives each day. We need to join as brothers and sisters now, not just as a reaction to tragedies, but as a way of preventing tragedies. Every decent man, woman and child at that rally felt like they belonged to something, felt they were part of something, felt they were standing for something meaningful that day... and that is the answer."

Coincidentally I'd not long completed a painting that illustrates this, so it felt appropriate to share it here. It is a work I'm very proud of and which I feel is my best 'Ideation' painting yet. It was in a national exhibition in Wanaka, 'The Aspiring Art Award' where although it was a finalist, it did not receive any awards (much to my sensitive ego's disappointment!). Here's the work, "Remember Our Humanity".

...and the story behind it:  It all began because I wanted to illustrate the idea of 'connection' by jigsawing people together. Once I began the concept (on paper), the idea took on a life of its own. Eventually, I produced a unit tessellation of an interconnected man and woman which I repeated and formed into a sphere. This became the initial painting (which took many weeks!). I could see all sorts of possible interpretations related not only to our connection with each other but to all other life-forms and our responsibility as caretakers of the world. I titled it "Remember Our Humanity", after exploring and linking my work to my answer to "How long will we remain masters of our creations?", a question posed in a design thinking paper I was taking (another whole story!). I added in the white t-shirted figure with the watch to bring in the human concept of linear time (the watch) and -the white shirt - in reference to our responsibility not only to the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants, but to providing peaceful solutions to human conflict (ie not war), which will be essential to ensuring the survival of our species.

I hope that made sense!!!! I would love your feedback as to what this image means to you. You can do so in the comments below, or on my facebook page (click on the facebook icon at the top of the page to go there).

May life bring you much love, joy and happiness. May the inevitable challenges you face be endurable and may you realise the gift that you all are to humanity.

Sending you all my love and best wishes.

Joanne

PS This painting is now available as an A4 pigment ink print...click here to see it.