oil on canvas

thank you very much to for the excellent stock photo i used as reference.

I used the title “impotent” in the sense of being or feeling unable to take effective action… a sense of powerlessness. Nothing to do with sexual dysfunction.

In doing this painting - I thought it was a feeling (or state of mind) many could relate to, and painting it was sort of a catharsis for me. However – I’m not trying to condone or glorify helplessness. As my artwork tends to reflect… I’ve become increasingly disgusted with the state of things in the world (especially the U.S.), and then frustrated in terms of knowing how I could contribute to changing things. The media, the blind patriotism, rampant consumerism, religious fundamentalism (not religion in general - just the fundamentalists), war mongering, narcissistic corporate greed, and on and on… they plague my thoughts and frustrate the hell out of me.

Anyway, I had a DA friend ask me not too long ago why I always piss and moan about things instead of getting off my ass to do something. He didn’t use those exact words and I don’t think his intention was to be offensive… I’m guessing he was just curious. At any rate – he had a point. I think that there’s a tendency for those of a progressive bent to do a hell of a lot of complaining and not much else. The reason for this is (in my humble estimation) that liberal sorts empathize very deeply with the misfits, the suffering, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the destitute – then we just flare up in anger at the bastards that walk all over them. We’d like to do something about it, but then our many limitations become all too apparent and we lose ourselves in despair. Also – we progressive sorts aren’t exactly the most organized creatures. We’re often more right brained emotional folks that have flashes of inspiration and creativity, but not much in the way of daily habits or a consistent framework that lends to a cohesive kind of productiveness. This is unfortunate – because many of the neocons out there are extremely organized… they’ve got little in the way of a heart, but they have extremely productive (yet - self-serving) hands. We’re all heart, but then our hands tend to get confused as to what to actually do about anything.

What should we do? I don’t know exactly, and I’m open to suggestions. I think as a start we have to be humble enough to know that we can’t do much by ourselves – we’ve got to come together. There probably aren’t gonna be any liberal supermen (or superwomen) to come save the day. Firstly – we shouldn’t underestimate the power of an organized group effort. One person votes, they recycle, they ride their bikes to work instead of driving to work, they turn off their TV, they become responsible consumers, they work at becoming politically informed and aware, they volunteer, they donate to worthy causes, etc…. yet nothing seems to change. “What does my little vote do?” “What have my feeble efforts accomplished?” By themselves these efforts (admittedly) don’t change much and there’s certainly no sense of immediate gratification. But if there were thousands or millions or billions of people with the humility to say to themselves “every little bit counts” instead of “fuck it – what can I do?”, well… collectively we could change the world.

Thank you for enduring my (extremely long) preachy-assed monologue.