Come Look with Me

 This painting, executed on a small canvas in a sufficiently loose painting style to warrant calling it an "oil sketch", depicts a stylized coal liquefaction plant, conveniently located on a seashore, in an unclear metabolic relationship with the nearby abundance of water into which it can tap by means of thick pipes emanating from its concrete base. HYDRA Coal Liquefaction Plant, oil on "Stylex" canvas, 30 x 40 cm Certain nations, nation states, countries, etc. in the history of modern civilization found it necessary to expand, colonize, or engage in questionable trade relations with other states because their own natural resources did not suit the demands of said state's motorized civil society nor war machinery. The alternative to expansion however could have been the development of efficient means of transformation of naturally occurring unsuitable resources (coal, in this case) by utilizing either alchemistic, holistic, biochemical or chemical pathways on a...

 SHY is of course a clever code name for something which prefers to remain unobserved. It could also stand for Secret Holistic Yearnings or Schillerian Halal Yeastless.  SHY Atomic Research Centre, sketch by the artist, 2029 This depiction does not pertain to a hypothetical facility hiding somewhere in the wooded regions of any nation right now accused of illegitimate desires to become part of the precarious world wide system of nuclear attrition. It is more an overall argument for reaching out and understanding between pro life and pro choice (which is admittedly a stretch, but admissible in the authors mind). Since people are patriarchally conditioned to be sun-worshippers and distrust the feminine principle of the nucleus, all nuclear research must be a somewhat shy pursuit. If observed, such a facility would be immediately become subject to intense debate, be criticized, ostracized, vilified, etc. If unobserved, it remains a peaceful, secluded spot for research in shadowy ...