Disrespect

Giclee Canvas print, Size: 23″ x 16, This part two artwork is a twin to a similar scene where a soldier with his daughter is paying respect to a family soldier member. Here is link to the companion product

“Look Away, Look Away America’s Dixieland” unfolds as a haunting odyssey through shadowed landscapes where history’s echoes vibrate with both color and silence. This mixed-medium creation, measuring 23″ x 16″, invites viewers into a surreal graveyard—a realm where time itself seems suspended, and memory becomes a palpable presence. Amidst the tombstones marked “UNKNOWN CONFEDERATE SOLDIER,” vivid cascades of green, red, and yellow paint distort perception, merging the solemn with the vibrant in a spectral dance of remembrance.

Figures akin to soldiers from ages past intermingle with the stones, mysterious custodians or wanderers, each weaving their silent narratives. One emerges from the earth, luminescent with a spectral blue, while others enact the ritual of preservation, echoing age-old acts of reverence and defiance.

The scene transitions into a dim, mist-enshrouded forest where ghostly battalions tread silently, spectral embodiments of forgotten struggles and lingering legacies. Here, the tangible and the ethereal entwine, reflecting on the cultural palimpsest of anger, pride, and remembrance that weaves through the fabric of civilization.

Inspired by moments of historical desecration, the artwork resonates with the timeless question of how societies choose to remember. Look at ancient Mayan ruins in Central America and see how monuments to their rulers were defaced during the tumultuous fall of their civilization. The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten similarly defaced and destroyed statues of earlier Egyptian gods in his religious reform 3,300 years ago, and Spanish conquistadors destroyed Aztec and Inca monuments and statuary in their war on idolatry in the New World. And there are plenty of examples of the desecration of monuments in the 21st century. The Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. Are not these the same problems currently plaguing America?

Endowed with a twin counterpart that hints at kinship and cyclical history, “Look Away, Look Away America’s Dixieland” stands not merely as an artwork, but as an invitation: a summons to engage with the spectral dialogues of the past and to ponder the complex tapestry of remembrance that wends through the vibrant clamor of the present.

Here is link to the companion product