According to Aldous Huxley “Heaven and Hell” are regions
of
the mind and how we perceive all things and other people.
Sartre wrote in his play “No Exit” that “Hell
is other people.”
The people in our lives are perceived by us from our experiences.
In my experiences I make these people into
symbols. These various portraits of people I know are made
into Baphomet POORtraits inspired by the Black Magician
Eliphas Levi who drew the Baphomet. We all recognized that
is associated with the Devil as the Goat of Mendes. I don't
see this symbol as a symbol of evil or good it is the human
experience in its totality both internally, externally, spiritually,
physically, sexually, metaphorically and sometimes literally.
There is always a danger in turning people into sigil images
or icons that can bring out the best we all strive for, or the
worst. These are my people, “Angels to some Demons to
others” as Clive Barker would say. Or, as Dio said in Black
Sabbath, “The world is full of kings and queens who'll blind
your eyes and steal your dreams that's Heaven and Hell” |
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Contrary to some religious traditions, I see heaven and
hell as states of mind rather than physical places. You
carry heaven or hell inside you and they reflect in your environment,
and consequently to the rest of the world.
In my pieces I tried to evoke not only personal
occurrences that brought the experience of hell very
close – like emotional pain, despair, and terror - but
also some reflections about the meaning and
achievement of “heaven” according to my own
perceptions. As I constantly do in my work, the figures
are depicted as religious icons in order to offer a
counterpoint to the human condition, where good and
evil amalgamate and become two faces of a same
coin. The demonic and the angelic are inside us, in
a perpetual dance of creation and destruction.
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