Oil on masonite, 40" X 44"

Oil on masonite, 40" X 44"

Oil on masonite; 40 X 48 inches

Medium: Oil on MDF; Size: 40" X 48"

Oil on MDF, 40" X 48"

Oil on MDF, 40" X 48"

Oil on MDF; 48" X 48"

Oil on MDF, 48" X 48"

Description - Excerpted from the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (aahsa) - By 2026, the population of Americans ages 65 and older will double to 71.5 million and about 12 million older Americans will need long-term care. - In the next 8 years, the number of Americans ages 85 and older will increase by 40%. - Among people turning 65 today, 69 percent will need some form of long-term care - There are more than 1.9 million nursing home residents in the United States. This represents less than 6% of the total number of Americans over the age of 65. It suggests that the vast majority of elderly will most likely spend their final years in their community residence. I am sure that I will see a lot of colleagues in my generation go through the assisted living / nursing home circuit. Sometimes I think that the term assisted living makes fun of old people the same way some refer euphemistically to short people as vertically challenged... Luckily the oldest member in our family does not need to go through the assisted living route. Various members of our extended family take turns looking after her. She may the last of a breed that have the privilege to be taken care of by their families. I painted this from a color photograph that I took of her after she had kindly agreed to pose for me. Title: “Sandhya Ragam”* Size: 2.5 ft X 2 ft (30 inches X 24 inches) Medium: Oil on canvas *'Sandhya Ragam' literally translated is a Malayalam word for evening melody.

Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher referred to them variously as ‘savages’, ‘aboriginal’ and ‘primitives’. A prevailing Hobbesian view tended to believe that the early colonizers of new worlds had a duty to civilize and modernize the indigenes or the local populace that they encountered. This story of conquest, subjugation and partial recognition has been repeated multiple times around the world. The story rings true among the Tuaregs of West Africa to Inuit of North America to the Adivasi of India to the Chukchi of the Arctic (among others). This painting that I completed of an unknown indigenous person represents just that - the product of an environment that partly recognizes them, yet keeps on the fringes in settlements and reservations designed so that the ‘indigenous’ cause minimal disruptions to our daily lives. Title: ‘Tangata whenua’ Size: 4 feet high X 3 feet wide Medium: Oil on canvas

This painting is a comment on the process of ivory tower based decision making in vogue in our country... Title: 'Odi Profanum Vulgus' Size: 4 feet high X 3 feet wide Medium: Oil on canvas

Painting post: Exploitation in Rwanda Statistics are sobering but none caught my attention more so than when I ran into a website called the Sisters of Rwanda here (http://sistersofrwanda.org/). This is an NGO run out of Rwanda by Jared N Miller (a partner in The Incubator Group, a private equity firm out of Nashville) and Joseph Ayienga (Pastor from Kenya). The NGO is actively involved in helping prostitutes (former and current) on the streets of Kigali, Rwanda lead better lives by teaching them about better opportunities and slowly but surely convincing them to stay off the streets. The numbers that caught my eye were the results of this group interviewing random samplings of women in and around Kigali. Some averages taken from interviewing groups of 50 women were as follows: (from their website) -5 Men per day -7 Days per week -3 Weeks off per year -A condom was used less than half of the time -If a man pays 5,000 RWF ($9.00 USD) he doesn’t have to use a condom. If a man pays 1,000 RWF – 3,000 RWF ($1.80 USD - $5.40 USD), the girl has some bargaining power and can get them to use one about half the time. The more the man pays, the less likely he is to use a condom. They had images of women on their site that bespoke a kind of suffering that I could hardly imagine and I decided to paint one of them. This is what I have created and I decided to call it "5 Men a day 7 days a week 49 weeks a year". The painting is 3 feet wide and 4 feet high.