Giraffe Massacre

---

charcoal capsules

turmeric

alcohol

water

steel brushes

cotton wipe towels

---

I mute the suffering in the paintings so people can look at them. I do it by muting it in myself.

I used to do that in my writing. Bring the reader up to the suffer point then turn it off with a distraction – just like I do it when I’m painting. I know the suffering, but don’t completely engage. One isn’t prepared to experience the suffering of others head on, since they don’t have their same defense systems in place. Not that defense systems help much under actions of torture and slaughter.

I’ve not much time to complete my work, so I made a decision to lift the haze from my writing that shielded the reader by making all thoughts equal absent emotion. I might as well have been writing a song in a language nobody understood.

At some level the psyche understands, but that concept of everything being equal because all atoms are the same and molecules are the same kept bothering me. Accepting atrocities because everybody does it kept gnawing at my gut.

It’s the configuration of the atoms and molecules and everything else that’s equal that produces the differences. That’s what I’m inserting into my writing now, by using a direct and unequivocal approach. No protective haze. But still in absence of fear.

The Yellow Duck Walks On Water collection is finished. The paintings were finished when I framed them.

The Snow collection, although to some viewers – maybe even me – appears finished. It won’t be until the works are framed. Until then I’ve got some finishing to do.

---

This is the first time I returned to work the paintings since Rose died. Except for COW GOING TO SLAUGHTER she was with me while I worked every piece, until a few days after she died when I painted my last work – two paintings done simultaneously: DONKEY PASSING and SEA (SEE) ANIMALS. Midnight Rose Davies-Tight died on 5 March 2011.

Rose is SNOW. I named the second and last collection after her. Several of our kids had nature names in addition to their regular names; Snow was hers.

I’m starting with GIRAFFE and renaming it what it is: GIRAFFE MASSACRE. Originally I saw only two giraffes. First it was Mama, then it was Papa, one or the other, taking care of baby. Now I see more.

last worked: 21 February 2019

---

---

---

---

---