These are the paintings. The sketches before them asked what the medium of martial arts is. This is the work made after I had an answer, during the years I could not get anyone to hear it.
Liberation From Fighting, Painting 04. Acrylic on canvas, 2015.
After many years of trying to convey a message through my art, to my contemporaries and to my students, I was unsuccessful. The context of fighting as a medium had become most familiar to me by then, and I still could not speak to it. My frustration grew until a depression set in. I stopped painting and began to burn my work, to purge myself of a radical idea that seemed redundant in the shadow of the status quo.
Paintings 01, 02 and 03. Ink on paper, 2015.
I continued to teach and train despite feeling weak. I became negative and dark like the ink in my work. The training and the painting are what I used to get out of it, which is the only reason I can describe any of this now.
The liberation here is not liberation from fighting, which is not available to anyone. It is liberation from being ruled by it. Being ruled means standing still: fixed on fighting for yourself, or fixed on fighting for others. Both ends carry a price. The title says what most people assume when they hear the word, and the work is the argument against it.
Exhibited
Core. Liberation. Awakening, group exhibition with Artists in Momentum. Mississauga, Ontario, 31 May 2015.
Also shown
Viva Mississauga Combative Sports Event, Hershey Sport Zone, Mississauga, 13 June 2015. A City of Mississauga event previewing the combative sports it hosted for the TO2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.
