John Brosio

Here is a recent “Edge of Town” piece, the 10th in the series. I suspect there will be more at some point too. But this one is definitely more mature with a less candied foreground like in the first few passages at this notion. To me it is simply a portrait of “now” with folks maybe coming to accept the doom and gloom currently hovering over our earthly proceedings. Or the doom and gloom that has always hung around, waiting. Or maybe it is folks living the way most all of us do now with the constant broadcast and backdrop of planetary proceedings being disseminated to us through the media such that we need do little more than turn our head to switch channels. I don’t know. But I have to admit that I am very numb to some of the stuff that used to dazzle. You are too. And funny, I have been asked weird questions about these paintings over time, a few of which had to do with “global warming.” And the funny thing about global warming, so called, is that it has become more a point of contention among the masses than an area of concern. It has also been relegated in social circles to a matter of belief. That’s a wild notion right there. For me, personally, it is easy to tell when someone is WAY smarter than me. Like scientists. Good ones. I love it when that happens. I listen to them and don’t really have that ignorant brand of hubris that has some folks saying, “well, that’s your opinion, but I think the earth is less than ten thousand years old.” I mean give me a break. So when it was recently announced by the IEA that global warming would have to be addressed by humans in a major way within the next five years (seriously, look it up. Scary) it didn’t really surprise me that so very few people seemed to have heard about it, understood it, or cared. Maybe it is that kind of insistence on a kind of ignorance that I see in this piece as the doom and gloom. Not sure. These paintings can be whatever you want them to be. The arrangement is intuitive.