The Eye

The catalyst for this painting was a conversation I had with my 9 year-old son. He had just learned the expression “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” He surmised that there are individuals who do bad things while believing that they are actually doing right and that he himself does things because he believes them to be right. But then how could he know what he was doing was actually right. The separation of truth from belief is a central conversation in many meditation practices.

I chose to use the eye to explore this concept because of the way the eye inverts what we see on the retina while our brain then inverts it again. In addition, our field of vision changes depending on if we have one eye open or the other or both.

In Taoist medicine the sense organs (eyes, hears, nose…) are our first connection with the exterior world therefore when we treat the sense organs we are working with our perceptions of who we are and our Tao, the path we are on in life. Clearing them may open one up to seeing or hearing something new or differently shifting our perception of who we are and our life’s purpose.

Most believe they are looking at moon phases when they look at this painting but this pattern of circle is also how blind spots are often depicted.

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