Slow Movement: a cultural reversal

The Slow Movement strikes at the heart of what it is to be human in the era of the silicon chip.    — Carl Honore

A hundred years ago the Futurists celebrated speed and our technological triumph over nature. Today there is much concern about how people are adversely affected by this conquest. On one hand, scientists predict a transhuman existence where we can order a set of lungs from the organ store or download intelligence on a computer. On the other, many object to a future of science fiction. The International Slow Movement is the quiet motor that breaths life into the prophecies of McLuhan and others, who saw that human beings, not designed to live at the speed of light, are destined for an inevitable cultural reversal. My paintings are about this reversal. Youth engaged against the speedy Muybridge figures celebrates the survival of nature in the face of technological acceleration.

I am inspired watching young people choose balance over a stringent work ethic, relationships over achievements, and refinement over material things. They are endorsing Slow: calm, receptive, intuitive, in favour of Fast: controlling, aggressive, hurried, impatient. These paintings are an investigation into sustaining the human in humanity.

Studies and Stages