Last week I finished a new painting, God’s Eye.
“God’s Eye,” oil on canvas, June, 2012, 24” x 20”. Click for a larger version of the image.
More about “God’s Eye” below, but first let’s talk about buying my art. I’m painting at a good rate, about one a month, and my storage space is getting full.
You can check out the individual works and the price-list at my paintings page. And note that you can buy prints via this page as well.
Here’s an overview image of my paintings.
Click for a larger version of the image.
Each of the paintings is signed, of course. Generally I paint the edges of the canvas so it can hang unframed, and I put my signature on the edge, as shown below.
Coming back to “God’s Eye,” I’ve always been intrigued by a certain image that one sees in old European churches—an eye inside a triangle. This icon also appears, of course, on the dollar bill. It’s meant to represent the all-seeing eye of God or perhaps the divine light within every object. In researching my novels with Bruegel and Bosch as characters, I got the impression that medieval people really did think God was watching them. So here I’ve painted the eye as looking down through clouds—like a spy-satellite. I made the “skin” in this image pink as a kind of joke on the fact that God is sometimes visualized as an old white man. What expression does the eye seem to have? I’d say it looks engrossed, with a possibility of becoming judgmental.
[Ebook cover.]
Still on the art promo front, I’ve made ebook and paperback versions of my art book, Better Worlds. It’s up to ninety-two paintings now. You can buy a high-resolution Kindle ebook from Amazon or get both the Kindle and EPUB formats, both in high-resolution, from my Transreal Books site.
I have a paperback of Better Worlds coming out in August as well. You can check for the link n my Transreal Books site.
And do think about buying a painting! My basement’s too full.
July 6th, 2012 at 7:31 pm
Hey Rudy,
The eye on the dollar bill, some say, is associated with the illuminati.
July 8th, 2012 at 12:03 am
I think that eye looks alarmed and distressed. It has an “oh no!” expression on it.
July 8th, 2012 at 9:08 am
Paradoctor, like, “What fools these mortals be!”
July 9th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
that painting has a serious flaw. the picture should have shown two triangular eyes on a cloud. also, the cloud should have a mouth. this should have been in anime style, since God is an awesome cartoonist and made all good anime. the cloud should be winking.
Hello, Hashem. what is the secret of the universe? -david lowenstein
the secret is that, this is a gigantic cartoon! surprise! -God
wierd! -dave
August 15th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
You know what’s interesting, vis-a-vis Dianne’s comment, is that the Illuminati (see e.g. armageddonconspiracy.co.uk) seem to frequently be associated with Gnosticism, and prominent within Gnostic mythology is the God Abraxas, a kind of evolution or Hegelian sublation of Lucifer (light/spirit/life, female) and Satan (dark/matter/death, male).
In this kind of Gnostic theology, then, Abraxas would most closely correspond to the traditional monotheistic idea of (an omnipotent, and more relevantly omnipresent and/or “all-seeing”) God, as found e.g. in Rudy’s post and painting.
Finally, it is interesting that Rudy explicitly characterizes his painted panoptic Eye in terms of contemporary surveillance technology, since recently, as yall may know, it was revealed via the Wikileaks dump of intelligence-firm Stratfor’s private emails that the US has essentially “secretly” and systematically implemented a sophisticated surveillance technology called “Trapwire” *in the United States* that basically piggybacks sophisticated, “better than facial recognition” technology upon the already-existing, less-sophisticated surveillance technologies (mainly all the surveillance cameras, over 15,000 in NYC alone I believe, but also satellite and GPS, and undoubtedly all the Facebook etc. information constituting your “digital double”).
And WHY are all these random facts interesting? Because the private intelligence firm that created and sells the surveillance technology Trapwire, apparently a veritable “who’s who” of the intelligence community (CIA, MI5, NSA, Stratfor, etc.), is called – ABRAXAS.
I’m not necessarily claiming any kind of conspiracy here, though it’s of course theoretically possible I suppose – I more simply find it interesting how mythology penetrates real-world history, presumably via (collective) culture.
…Although I will admit, having just begun reading Rudy’s Infinity and the Mind, he certainly cites a lot of Gnostic material in the first chapter, for a book categorized at least as mathematics (I don’t mean to sound critical or pejorative – on the contrary, I’m delighted by these resonances/serendipitous connections / instance of Jungian “synchronicity”, and by Rudy’s choice in terms of expository style – I’ve read technical and layman’s books on the subject, and so far his drives the best middle line). Maybe his IS in the Illuminati after all, and is trying to Enlighten us! (JK – or am I?)
August 31st, 2012 at 11:38 pm
Wow, my one little comment generated an in-depth response from Allen P. What does it all mean? 🙂