Thursday, September 17, 2015

Caniglia-"Monarch Paintings"

I would like to thank everyone who came out to the Union For Contemporary Arts show yesterday. It was a huge success and it was great to see so many people at the gallery enjoying art.
I have three more small study paintings that I wanted to show that are part of my upcoming show. These monarch oil studies are a mix of ideas from sketches I am working on for larger paintings. The monarch is a symbol for the entire global community. It can represent the stages of life related to our own personal lives as well as growing pains that our world experiences with oppression, change, hunger, vulnerability, transformation and the miraculous expansion at the beginning and end of life

The amazing life cycle that transforms the Eastern Monarch from a striking caterpillar into a magnificent and graceful butterfly has long captured our imaginations. But the Monarch is now facing an uncertain future, with populations in severe decline across North America. A new report that just came out today showed results from last year and the year before, that the population was down ninety percent, which is a lot for the Monarch Butterfly.

The decline of the Monarchs coincides with the eradication of the Milkweed, a plant that the Monarch caterpillars feed on exclusively. Milkweed is cleared from fields used for agriculture, and the few plants that do survive are often treated with damaging pesticides that kill the caterpillars. Every milkweed that is planted across the Midwest does make a difference. I encourage those of you who have time and space to consider planting milkweed.
Our world is constantly shifting and at times feels like we are standing on unsteady ground. Every one of us has a long journey ahead. On this journey we encounter endless turns, twists, and conditions that cause us to morph into ever-finer beings or at least we hope. During the process towards our journey's end we are inevitably changed in so many different ways, and along the way we realize that we are not the same as when we started on the path.
-Caniglia



Caniglia-New Monarch Painting

I have another painting that I wanted to post this week from my new series. This painting is called
“A luminous, fluttering melody tethered to a dystopian dream”.
In the painting I show a Monarch tethered to a brick that society has placed on it, in the hopes that the brick can make the monarch fade or stop it from flying. The Monarch sails against society and flutters through the conditions and the environment that our world has dealt it.
The idea of this series, as I had mentioned in another post, is to take control of your life even when obstacles are holding you down and oppression seems to overwhelm your dreams and aspirations.


As I look at the youth in the Gaza Strip caught in between the blurred lines of war, they seem no different then our own American youth caught between gangs, prejudice, and poverty. The youth didn’t create the situation that they were born into; they are just forced to deal with it.
Hence the butterfly tied to a brick that still manages to fly trying to escape an environment in hopes of freeing itself. When society shows you a world with no horizons, it is up to you to find a path with a glint of light. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and there is no greater joy than to have a world with endlessly changing horizons.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said…
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
-Caniglia