Duality

I have always been a misfit. I have always had the ability to go anywhere yet fit in nowhere. Control an environment even though I didn’t fit in. Care but…not really. Both sides of temperament. Both sides of action. Both sides of the law. Both sides of sanity. I read Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Jung, Freud, and Sun Tzu while my preteen friends read comic books. I was an alter boy and an honors student at the same time I was gang banging and participating in other elicit activities. Faithful and a fiend all at the same time. I know peace and the solution finds rest in the middle. I preach and teach such. However, I often find myself at either aspect of the spectrum. The calm comes in my work. The outlet for what I have leaned is my work. My sanity resides in my work. The only place I will find peace is on a canvas. It is the one place where I am not a misfit. I am Godbody, a creator.

Linear thought commands a structure that leads to a defined outcome. I do not adhere to such. Through conceptualism and abstraction, all aspects of involved elements must be understood in order to achieve an outcome. Simply knowing isn’t enough. One has to know what knowing is, how to structure knowing as well as its infinite potential for implementation. Pick and idea. Now, explore and develop. In the process of developing one must intimately know that it is a balance of construction and deconstruction. A single mark deconstructs the virgin surface and constructs something new. As does every other action henceforth. In order to create, be it a surface or an individual, a philosophy or an intellect, building and destroying are inseparable.

My work takes philosophy, psychology, sociology, sacred geometry, alchemy, symbolism, introspective thought and combines such in order to create a language. Visually it may be appealing. If knowledge, wisdom and understanding are implemented… a language and story are created. This story’s interpretation is left to the participant. I have not lived your life for your life so I cannot dictate what you should take from its impression. I can allow the viewer to act and interpret out of their own free will. This takes form in an array of concepts. It serves me, as a person and a creator, no purpose to confine myself to one style of creation. Different ideals have different mediums. This may take the form of paintings, sculpture, photography, spoken word, video, sound, fashion. Expression.

There is a popular ideal that an artist is supposed to maintain one style in order to ensure recognition. I do not subscribe to this ideal. It is often propagated that an artist of a particular background and environment is to only speak to certain subject matters to reflect the stereotypes of these conditions. As if they are incapable of speaking to something that does not readily fall in line with what the uninitiated think they should address. I am not of that cloth. I set an example that breaks this typecast. It is critically important for me to break these confines and show the next, current and elder generations that we are free to be. After all…that is what art is supposed to be about, freedom.

This explanation could have been shorter. I could have waxed poetic about my accomplishments and accolades, interviews and articles, exhibitions and collections I am in, however at the end of the day, none of this is truly important. What I want to convey is it is ok to think. We live in an age where study and investment in knowledge are no longer the norm. Where people don’t know…they look up. People use haphazardly use information to justify their own uneducated agenda, they don’t own nor invest in it. I, through my work, take all the information I have obtained and create something to be related to and contemplate. Do with it what is necessary.

People search their entire life trying to find what their purpose is. I have danced with death far too many times. I have lost my life, literally, and was brought back. I have, as of now realized my purpose. It is said that some people are sheep and others are wolves. Metaphor for the weak and the strong. My work, my words, serve the purpose to fulfill my purpose. It is my job to save as many sheep as I can while I am not training the wolves. Duality.

I am a mentor to many. I have many mantras and ideals that I give to people. The mantra I pass along the most as of late is this. Information is free. Ignorance is expensive. Ignorance can cost you everything. Information learned breeds knowledge. For this, all you have to pay…. is attention.

I am not a person that makes art. Makers produce objects. I am an artist. I create life.

Thank you for your attention.

Ameen