Golden

Works in Jan’s Colorfields are richly-saturated abstract-expressions that characterize his emotional response to events going on around him in the contemporary world, and works in his Pixelated Fabric series reflect on the role that social media played in the result of the 2016 US election.

Golden is a meditation on three things: (1) the ‘golden mean,’ an ancient Greek philosophical belief in a desirable middle or ‘golden middle way’ between two extremes, (2) the ‘golden ratio,’ which is a mathematical equation observed to be expressed in biological symmetries of forms like the whorl of new shoots emerging from a young plant, the seed patterns of a sunflower, and the chambers of a nautilus shell, and (3) the ‘Golden Rule,’ a universally-endorsed ethic of, in the Christian culture the artist was raised (atheistically) around, ‘doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.’

Taken together, these three notions, and the work as intended by association, speak to the clear existence of universal symmetries in our realities, the first two rotating smoothly about a central point, and the third speaking to the artist’s belief that we are each shepherds of goodness, gentleness, truth, justice, fairness, righteousness, and ‘light’ in the world, and that it is our responsibility (in Jan’s words, our ‘job’) to help bring stability, propserity, mutual respect, honor, fairness, peace, balance, and beauty into our world, one step at a time, even amid and out of periods of social disruption, chaos, and struggle. To achieve, in Jan’s words, “a full-flowering of the very best in humanity.”

Like the other square colorfield prints in the Pixelated Fabric series, this work is brightest toward the center and darkest toward the edges, expressing Jan’s opinion that social progress is best pursued through paths of moderation, toward the center of the political spectrum, and steering clear of the extremes of left, right, and radicalized political rhetoric.