A Wild Rose Garden

A Wild Rose Garden is a digital painting exploring subjectivity in the perception of reality. What we perceive is an illusion, and how we express it says more about us, our experiences, our beliefs, and our fears than it says about objective reality. Art is in itself subjective as it is a projection of the artist’s interpretation of reality, be it of the physical world, or of the psychological depths of the imagination.

The ambiguity in the title is intentional. Is it a wild rose-garden, or a wild-rose garden? Whichever way one sees it, it is the preface of illusion. The painting is expressed in a somewhat realistic style, yet there is little real about it. It recalls the expression to look through rose-tinted glasses, yet the idiom here reveals the opposite.  The garden suggests a terrain of artistic creation fertilized by the unbridled imagination of a painfully modern and plastic character, empty of reflection and depth, with no deep moral sense, and without any real knowledge of self, or of his or her spiritual dimension.

One may assume that the character is an artist, or question whether he or she is male, female or transgender. There again the sleight of hand trick of the magician is at play. However one perceives it, this character is artificial, materialistic and worldly. Such is the impact of a new reality being manipulated by unscrupulous influencers in journalistic and social media in a world overtaken by virtual realities. Disinformation and conspiracy theories colour our vision of reality like VR headsets. The influencers, represented here by a wild and drunken judge—and mirror to one’s internal judge— eventually affect the mental acuity of the unwitting. Their wild rhetoric populate unsuspecting minds with a menagerie of imaginary plastic creatures from the depths of alternate realities.

A rose is a rose is a rose, but like art, perception is illusion—it is never objective. My perception of reality is mine alone, yours is yours, and the only way the We can have a better grasp of reality is through non-judgment and open constructive dialogue. As long as each of us, and by extension our societies, remain in our own perception bubbles, we will remain isolated and divided, and our understanding of reality will be limited.This isolation makes us more vulnerable to manipulation by exterior forces, and weakens our liberty of choice as individuals, and as communities.

© Andrew Lue-Shue, July 2023