At The Gates, Acrylic on Canvas, 2015, 36″ x 20″

I’m fascinated these days with guardians. Images, sculptures, possible spirits that watch over places and protect them. Like Cerberus, Chinese Guardian Lions, the Japanese Koma-inu, or the Okinawan Shisa. This idea of images as protectors of a space, or even people or things. A marker of something important, gates, boundaries, a different or separate space.

One wonders if a painting could be, or rather become, a household god of sorts.

As  I worked on this painting, ideas from what I have been reading about these guardians lately seemed to come right out at me. Since then, a lot of my drawings have been centered around this idea, and I am digging in with my research on them.

It seems like it might be a direction things go for me in the next few months. It is certainly exciting me and seems like a fruitful direction.