Tuesday, August 7, 2012

BEAUTY: Art--John Brosio

I am absolutely struck by John Brosio's terror-inducing tornado paintings. He has captured a moment in history that will haunt us for hundreds of years to come. People stand idly by, stroll the streets of their isolated and insulated small town, and children play outside, while the effects of extreme climate change devour us, destroy the land, and turn our world into an uninhabitable nightmare. The fact that there are still people who seem to be willfully ignorant and dangerously stubborn in their denial of what is happening to our continent and to the world boggles my mind. I have heard many of these people try to reassure themselves by saying foolish inanities such as, "Oh, 'God' would never let anything bad happen to us." Or they seek to lay blame on the idea that their "God" is somehow angry with humans for some kind of perceived transgressions related to their own religious beliefs, and that therefore "God" punishes the American mid-west and south with tornadoes, hurricanes, and drought. Those people are the ones who scare me the most; the ones who can hide behind superstitions and sanctimonious moralizing, as we all create this mess.

What is going to happen to us?


Top to bottom: After School; Cleaning; Edge Of Town; Edge Of Town 4; Oklahoma Twister; Scouring; Study for Terrarium; The Quickening; Unforgiven

http://www.johnbrosio.com/index.html

2 comments:

Shannon said...

Wow - those are amazing!

Jeff said...

Shannon,

I thought they were pretty amazing too! What is so powerful is the way he depicts the enormity of the tornado in some of the pieces where he pulls the point of view very far away, so we see a teeny tiny little farm (which we know is sprawling and we know those grain silos are pretty big) dwarfed by this unfathomably large monster of a storm.

Thanks for your comment!