The Cowboy Angel and the Gates of Eden

 

'The Cowboy Angel and the Gates of Eden' - Mixed media digital and otherwise - printed, painted and arranged on canvas and board.- George Roberts January  2024.

Eventually finalised what was originally a digital image /sketch - see 'Fermi Paradox' post. When I got around to making a submission for the Royal Academy Summer Show they had already reached their self imposed limits for registration (165,000 submissions). Anyway, I was reasonably pleased with the completed collage, which differs in a number of ways from the original idea in addition to the title. The new name for this collage alludes to a Bob Dylan song 'Gates of Eden', which I used to sing way back in the late 1960's. Since then full internet access to and from millions of personal mobile phones has industrialised  the movement of information, sanctified money and generated a multiplicity of affordable 'keys' to the Gates of Eden.  We have collectively made gods of celebrity and created heroes from rogues. We have mixed the truth, lies, science and faith to such an extent that we struggle to  make decisions in our collective best interests. Perception of the Universe is now so corrupted by our shared beliefs that evidential reality has become subjective. Why is Paradise  perceived  as somewhere else, ever something to be gained or lost but always locked away and gated beyond our current reach? Beats the shit out of me!

"Of war and peace the truth just twists

Its curfew gull just glides

Upon four-legged forest clouds

The cowboy angel rides

With his candle lit into the sun

Though its glow is waxed in black

All except when ’neath the trees of Eden"