Love

A series of fifteen paintings exploring the philosophical root of the concept of Love. It is hard to condense this word that has so many different ramifications. Most commonly, the ancient Greeks divided love in 8 different forms: passionate love (eros), friendship love (philia), family love (storage), self love (Philautia), spiritual love (agape), playful love (ludus), committed love (pragma) and obsessive love (mania).

Through this series, the works approach in a emotional, humorous, and visceral way this odd mix of overwhelming emotions amalgamated into one word ‘love’.

Within these works there are two particular stories explored:

The first, second and fourth painting starting from the top left are based on images from Paul Gorman. A now father from Philadelphia, US. That struggled with drug abuse.

In the first image you can see a photo of his arm taken by his mother while in the hospital.
The second image shows him and his daughter playing with his niece, after being fully recovered.
For the fourth image I quote him:

“The woods picture was taken in October of 2006 by my then almost 4 year old daughter. We were in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I had been using meth and heroin particularly hard on that trip. My daughter snapped this picture of me as we walked in the woods I remember that day very well I could feel my own insanity like a 1,000 pound weight on my back and rather than fight it …i went into it even further”