Separation. Originally a commissioned painting about an adult child who lost their parent, this piece represents the multiplicities of meanings we give to all forms of separation. As a child, I was always running away from my parents in department stores, hiding among the clothing racks. When in a forest, I ‘wandered off,’ subconsciously seeking refuge from the two giants who were inflicting excruciating pain on my brain, mind, and body. For me, as a child surviving abuse, separation was a positive, liberating experience. For a child of a safe and nurturing family structure, that same separation would have been painful. Indeed, for orphans all over the world, separation is a demoralizing and debilitating experience. Yet, for the spouse exiting a harmful marriage, or the employee exiting a dysfunctional job, separation is a liberating and calming experience.

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During the pandemic of 2020, social isolation – a specific form of separation – came into practice as a technique of hygiene and ‘interpersonal sanitization,’ even as it threatened to undo already fragile socioeconomic bonds of community. The dynamic of separation carried both the heaviness of a depressive state of loss (of routine, rituals, and regular socialization) and the lightness of a liberated state of autonomy (especially if one was an introvert newly unburdened from the demands of socialization). Separation therefore carried a multiplicity of meanings. It meant safety from contamination; the restructuring of jobs, romantic relationships, and schooling; and an increase in boredom, fatigue, and mental health challenges. Separation was both the solution to problems and the introduction of problems. 

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In art, separation also carries a multiplicity of meanings. Paint belongs on the canvas, not on the floor or clothes or even on the palette; and yet paint can and does land on the floor, clothes, and, of course, begins on the palette. The paint must become separate from the tube, stay separate from the clothing of the artist, and is ‘worthless’ when on the palette or floor. The paint that ends up on the canvas, however, takes on value and meaning and relevance. That paint becomes separate from all the other paint in the tube, that landed on the floor or clothes, and that remained on the palette. While this process of separation is physical outside the body, the value and meaning and relevance of separation is psychological within the brain-mind. Buyers are willing to pay only for the paint that ended up on the canvas, nowhere else; the paint on the canvas is the only paint that mentally becomes different or psychologically separate from the remaining paint, as if it possessed an otherworldly, supernatural’ substance inherently separating it from the qualities of the paint elsewhere. 

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Then we have the question of the frame. Some people differentiate, or separate, a painting from the rest of the wall by framing it. The philosopher Jacques Derrida questioned this practice by arguing that the frame is neither of the work nor outside it; it functions to make the separation between art and non-art seem natural as opposed to artificial. That is, a ‘frame’ is that which produces the ‘naturalness’ between outside and inside. Personally, none of my paintings have a frame, physical or psychological. Even my signature is hidden on the back of the painting because, to me, a signature distracts from the painting as part of the world, of the universe. The frame (or signature) is a clever disguise that tells the viewer, “This object is separate from the background, from the world in which it exists.” It is not. Imagine someone with a painting worth $1 million who keeps the work of art in an empty trash can. “Why would you keep it here?!” you ask your friend. “It should be on a wall,” you implore. With this example, it’s easy to understand that art is part of the environment in which it finds itself. The painting and the wall it ‘should’ be on are interconnected. Walls ‘need’ art and art ‘needs’ walls. This is the case with genetics as well; an entire field called epigenetics now exists to understand the gene-environment interaction. At the level of the whole organism, what is a beaver without its dam or a fish out of water? 

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For another example, take the idea of “celebrity.” Why do we mentally separate these ordinary people, these fellow humans, from other humans? What special qualities do ‘they’ possess when they have the same cells and neurons as anyone else? The answer is that the camera that follows them positions them as separate, living pieces of art. The camera frames them as if they were living art, and in the brain-mind of the viewer this imbues these ordinary humans with otherworldly or supernatural qualities. The human in front of the camera takes on a magical quality, and when walking among everyone else, appears to have stepped outside the frame and into the ‘rest of the world.’ This is why so many humans jump for joy when they see a “celebrity” in the wild, off camera; it is literally like seeing a work of art without its frame. This ‘living art’ has been freed from the confines of its framing to roam the streets among those who never had the ‘privilege’ of becoming framed, or separated, from everyone else, by the camera. Indeed, the obsessive fixation so many people have on becoming famous via social media (especially TikTok) is, underneath, the desire to become framed as living art, separated from the anonymous masses.

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Separation always has and will always have a multiplicity of meanings in human experience. This painting displays flowers among stars, unseparated, because as in many of my other works, it takes chemistry to make biology. The atoms and molecules floating around in the universe combined to form flowers, so there really is no separation between them.