Imagine

Imagine all the people.

Imagine a simple linocut block print artwork turning into a multi-week contemplation on philosophy, the state of our world, and human connection.

There's a kind of attention that comes with carving a linocut block. You have to move slowly, be intentional with every line, and plan it all out. And when you have a three-layer print to carve, you have a lot of time to think.

My new print, Imagine, is built in layers (although, I also like just the final block pattern by itself…alas, I can’t decide). The world is behind a tree with intricate pattern lines and leaves growing through it. Circling are three phrases from Lennon's lyrics: living for today, living life in peace, sharing all the world. Nestled in trunk, the base of our being - Imagine all the People. It's the kind of image that asks to be examined slowly — which is also how it was made.

Which do you prefer? With the color/world or without?

Creating as Contemplation

Imagine living for today.

Something I think about a lot is the act of creating. Creating art, in my case, or creating in general.

There's no instant gratification. What there is, instead, is time. Time spent in a task that, to be honest, isn't drastically changing the world. As I've expressed before, this fact weighs on me.

I started this piece during a stretch of weeks when the news felt relentless with more violence, more fear, more power structures at play that leave the everyday people at a loss. Here I am sitting in my studio, creating this artwork. It feels absurd and also, the only most right thing for me to do.

I went WAY too dark on the blue for my first test prints.

Escapism or Coping? Yes

I've been wrestling with a question that I suspect a lot of artists are quietly (or not so quietly judging by Instagram) sitting with right now: Is making art during crisis an act of escape or an act of survival?

I'm not sure if the two are different or if that matters.

Escapism has a bad connotation, as though turning away from suffering is cowardice. But the human need to create isn't weakness. When faced with what we can't fix, an act of expression from deep within us at least grounds us in ourselves. The act of making something beautiful when the world is a mess isn't denial. It's a kind of insistence that expression still matters. We, as a single human, still matter.

And yet, there's something more than coping in creating too. Art doesn't just help us survive. It’s reaching toward something or an aspiration to what could be. Lennon released "Imagine" in 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War and Cold War tensions. He wasn't pretending the world was fine. He was imagining, aspiring towards what could be.

The act of creating positions us towards our truest selves. And, I honestly feel that if more people were better attuned to their inner selves, we’d be in a lot better place as a global society.

History Keeps Repeating

Imagine living life in peace.

I've been reading Sebastian Smee's Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, a book about the artists of the Impressionism movement in the time around the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. What strikes me most is thinking about the situation of artists we all know by name — Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir — being artists and then part of military service when their city was at war, and violence and suffering were widespread.

The Impressionists didn't paint the war directly. They painted everyday moments, modern life, the effects of light. Smee makes the case that this was a refusal to let suffering be the only story. Ordinary beauty was worth attending to, even after catastrophe.

I’ve been thinking about the lessons from history in this book alongside our current world. In the studio, I keep thinking about what it means to make something peaceful when peace feels out of reach.

What Is Art For

Imagine sharing all the world.

Here's what I keep coming back to: I can't stop the violence and the continual demonstration of power and money over good and morality. What I can do is attend to a different storyline. I can’t drown out the noise, but I can live a life, reminding myself and those around me that the noise is not the whole truth. Love, care, and connection with others matter.

Imagine doesn't solve anything. I don’t pretend it does. But it holds a vision for what could be and offers it to whoever picks it up. Perhaps that's enough. Maybe some part of what art is for is exactly this: to make a record that someone, at some time, believed in living for today, living in peace, sharing the world.

Lennon was right that it's easy to dismiss as dreaming. And I often, at least multiple times a week, throw up my hands at the futility of it all. But I come back to an inexplicable desire to insist that little things do matter. So, I continue to do what feels most right --- and create. I continue to try to create a tiny corner of the world that is filled with love, creativity, and connection.

And I hope you'll join me --- daring to imagine a world where we live more in the moment and collectively make efforts to live in peace in our world.

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"Imagine" linocut prints available >