Buddha Taking a Break

follows the suggestion of the old proverb "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him" . ..Buddha in this drawing cycle becomes dismantled to the mundane, everyday Jo with his everyday flaws and his everyday details of life where he dangles, half dressed in his less heroic garb. As he is partly posing partly being evesdropped upon by myself, the artist-voyeur, I delight in finding him sitting on the pot, having a cigarette, taking a nap, or getting himself caught with his hand in the cookie jar... . This perspective reverses a pictorial tradition in which the male painter depicts the female - often as an object of desire, surprised and perhaps vulnerable to the male gaze upon her more private activities such as bathing, sleeping, getting dressed...and lonely exept for the presence of her pet companion.

In keeping with this pictorial tradition I focus my rendering on a certain delight in lushious detail yet undermine it with the grey tonality and rough interference of the paper surface. I forged these panels in large sizes which makes the pieces hard to overlook, similar to any depiction of an historic hero, and in absurd contrast to the unheroic poses our everyday hero assumes.