What is it with those Black and White Floors?

Black and White, and More

This is not a black and white world
There are so many shades, colors, and tints,
Between the two
That our eyes cannot see them all,
Neither can our minds comprehend them all.

Welcome to the new age is a line in a song
What was once will soon no longer be.
It is up to us to see the colors of the future
It is up to us to shed old skin that gets in our way.

Don’t let the past define you
But don’t forget it either.
Lessons learned need to be incorporated
In this new world.

The need for control
Over minds, bodies, lives
Is no longer our best way forward.
We all have brains, opinions, needs
All valid, and all should be part of the experience.

The chaos is real
The remedies are unclear
Lift your voice, share your ideas
Listening to each other is the only way forward.

Cheryl McDonald © 2023

If you would like to hear me read this poem, please click below

Since the hanging of my latest exhibit at the Maturango Museum, which is truly an exciting event for me, there has been many questions and speculations about my using black and white tiles in perspective as the foundation for many of my works. And my thought has always been, it reminds me of the strange and chaotic chess game in the book Through the Looking Glass of the Alice in Wonderland five book series. And that is still true, however I have been thinking about this in a deeper way, mostly because it seems to cause some people distress, but partially because I am curious why that section of the book seemed to stick with me.
To begin with, I have no nefarious underlying intent to cause anyone harm, it is not political, or religious or anti-religious in anyway. And so this is more of an explanation of why this symbolic flooring has meaning to me.

Life in many ways is like a game of chess. The strangeness in that particular chess game symbolizes for me what I often see and feel that life in these times is about, and these drawings are the way that I express that. Chess has been an artifact of my life. It was a favorite pass time for a couple of people that I knew very well and they were very good at the game. Because I am an empathic person who uses intuition frequently, the idea of developing long-term strategy, which is important to be good at chess, is not something I am good at.

But this morning it occurred to me that just like chess pieces which each have a particular set of movements they can travel on the board, we can be very much the same in our lives. The methods, habits, and rituals we choose to handle situations each day are developed over time and it is rare for most of us to change even when what we are doing does not accomplish the end result we want. So we often fill our lives with other people who move in opposite patterns so that just like on a chessboard we can develop a strategy to accomplish our goals. Because nature and people are never totally predictable, building a fail-safe strategy where you can project an extended sequence of moves is pretty hard to do, the ends are not always what we hoped for. The consequences in life can be much more brutal than facing checkmate in a game of chess.

Our lives are changing so rapidly and we are living longer healthier lives, old strategies simply may no longer be viable and I think this is partially what is causing so much upheaval and drama in our world today. We are having to change our strategies whether we like it or not, in order to maintain a planet and our life on it faster and more completely than ever before. There are many who don’t buy into this idea and they are fighting to keep things as they have been in the last half century or so. This is not politics, this in survival.

Thank goodness more and more our young people do see what’s coming and because they are less set in their life patterns they are forging new ways and new strategies to do the work that is necessary. We older generations can be the tempering that can make these strategies work, using our past experience to smooth impatience and share history so it is not repeated.

In the end my artworks are about change that is in process. It is my opinion that I am expressing and I do appreciate the questions and the difference of opinions of others. That is what a free society is all about.

Have a Happy Day!
Cheryl