If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away---Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Holy Cow! Theodicy in Microcosm

Finished an ink drawing in a series I have started called "Theodicy in microcosm" (First drawing: http://leosart.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/gods-eye-is-on-the-sparrow/). Theodicy literally means "God's justice." It is the problem or defense of the goodness and omnipotence of God in the presence of moral or natural evil and suffering. The primary question of theodicy might be something like this: If God is all powerful, in control, and perfect in goodness and love, then why is there evil in the world? Theodicy is most often about philosophical arguments in defense of God than it is about getting down to the real nitty gritty of human suffering and pain.

The problem of suffering and evil usually is presented on a grand, universal, often abstract, or macrocosmic scale, such as human pain, disease, death, violence, poverty, hunger, war. My ink drawings will present the problem of suffering and death on a close-up, small, individual or microcosmic scale among the animal kingdom, which points to the human realm.

My first drawing came to be after contemplating a dead bird in a parking lot and simply asking "Why?" That drawing was a way to memorialize that moment, that bird, along with that particular question. These series of stark, and ugly ink drawings will be my indirect or angular way of asking the question about a more macrocosmic theodicy.

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