Fate and Free Will

A familiar theme in my paintings is the dialogue between fate (destiny) and free will (determinism). Our lives determine and are determined by our culture, education, experience, family, gender, community and society. The idea of free will is seductive. All of us like to believe we are free. Determinism is chief among the ideas we use to define ourselves. In a large part of our lives we have no free choice because those parts have been fated to us. The freedom we imagine for ourselves is that we are self-reliant, immune to the influence of history or our surroundings. In my visual vocabulary, birds have free will. They can come and go as they please. Reptiles represent those parts of our life we are unable to control, just as snakes and turtles are bound to place. Also present in each work are abstract and realistic components.