E.A.R.T.H

Brian Kirhagis

June 7 – July 20, 2018

Earth #1, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 38 inches

Earth #4, 2018
Acrylic on wood panel
48 x 48 inches

Earth #5, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 60 inches

Earth #6, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 60 inches

Earth #8, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 36 inches

Earth #10, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
43 x 35 inches

Earth #11, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
43 x 35 inches

Press Release

Mother Earth.  Mother shop, Mother country, Mother land and even Mother board – she just gets her just due everywhere else – except in our books, schools, homes, businesses, offices, institutions or churches.  It is one of the worst stains on humanity in my opinion; how we treat our women.  Let’s not kid ourselves either.  It’s been this way for a long time, way before recent events sparked this new culture of account-ability.  But such is the way life goes.  We can avoid looking in the mirror for however long is convenient, but one day as men we will stumble upon a reflection of ourselves, and as men we have to deal with what we see.

Why? Because it is not Our story or Her Story.  Men wrestled away the pen that wrote HIS story and fellas, we’re running incredibly late on correcting the record.  In fact, if you pulled back the layer of anyone’s family, you will undoubtedly find a current of matriarchs through which it runs.  Much in the same way when we pull back the layer of our collective human family you inevitably find earth under the pages of men.  A time before power and greed and the fallacies of the ego, when great Queens ruled over the fertile black sands of Khem.  HIStory recorded it as the land of darkness.  We know now that we’ve never lived in such light again.

I was a seed raised by the richest earth.  She gave me a brolic stem and crucial nutrients in the toppest soil.  It didn’t matter where the garden was I had water and sun.  I grew beautiful silk leaves and as I bloomed my petals stretched out as paintbrushes.  Theses canvases are pollen to be collected into your spirit and spread around into new growths of thought and action.  It is your job to carry it with you and plant it in your own circles, conversations and backyards.  Why do we say behind every great man is an even greater woman?  Why can’t we elevate her to the front?  What are we all thirsty chasing the same thing for?  We should stop running, turn around, and go back to where we came from.  The sacred feminine.  Our source.  Our Earth.

When I work I feel like I’m dipping swords in paint.  Fighting for what’s right with the tools I’ve been given.  In the end that is all we can do.  Let us grow something different.  We thought the strongest arm deserved to write down our stories and shape our societies.  It should have been the strongest soul.  This show is an ode to our greatest gift from which we all came.  Our Earths.  Everything always returns to her.