21st CENTURY SURREALISM LAURENCE MONIER MODERN ART

Oil on canvas, 60x48" (152.4x121.9cm) This ensemble of images is my interpretation of the raping of the African continent. I have placed Africa in a snow globe to drive home the point that the motherland is and has been treated as a trinket. The clouds depict the wild game big five that are moving closer toward extinction.The landscape is barren, with a stone ballon floating above. The floating stone demonstrates mankind’s folly and indifferences toward the earth. The hole in the foreground represents the empty promises of blue skies, sunshine and profit from digging holes in the earth. The snow globe sits on a stylized stage behind a useless lock door. The chest piece is filled with locus, a modern day trojan horse.

Oil on canvas, 36x54" (104x138cm) This painting is my visual first page to an old fable that has never been written, and only exits in my imagination. Eleven miners toiled in a quarry, which is represented by the floating stone columns. Their sweat and tears fell to the earth to become smooth stones. As the miners perished they ascended to Valhalla, one leaving his pickax on the stairs to heaven. Their spirit selves can be seen in the clouds. Eleven candles shed light on their fallen tears. There is a theme of eleven to this painting it started out a random coincidence which I began to exploit. Eleven round green stones, eleven holes in the driftwood, eleven stone columns and eleven small branches on each of the of the two large branches. When I realized the coincidence, I followed suit, eleven steps, eleven candles and of course eleven faces in the clouds.

Oil on canvas, 48x60" (121.9x152.4cm) This playful painting has different perspective within the same object as I did with the window frame. I used the apples to reference the change in perspective. I have placed the wooden floor under the table, but where the wall “should be”.The wall has a round peg in a square hole, a small joke I afforded myself. I also played between two dimensional and three dimensional representation. Illustrating this with the objects on the table. The table itself has a change of perspective within it’s form. The red vase is feminine because when a vase is full, it has a giving and nurturing quality.

Oil on canvas, 48x60" (121.9x152.4cm) This near self portrait is painted from the perspective of the subject looking at his reflection in a bucket of water. The water is in close association with the concept of infinity, hydrogen a component of water, has been around since right after the big bang. The viewer’s hands are placed on the edge of the bucket about to enter water. This represents the event horizon, a term used in physics, a place where if one could stand at the edge of a black hole, just before one is pulled in, to be lost forever. The background is made by condensation on my shower curtain, very earth bound.

Oil on canvas, 48x60" (121.9x152.4cm) This painting is the imagination of a western, christian male’s interpretation of what life could be like for women who choose or are forced to wear a burka. The three women are nude because the clothes are interior of the burka, which form their environment. There is the young girl who is pregnant and trapped in ice forever frozen in her role of motherhood. The woman who is climbing the stairs has given her heart and mind to the culture, her feet incased in the blocks and the rose and the fragrance there of ensure total submission. The woman in the center is a representation of the women who choose to end their lives or who have their life taken from them, this is represented by the flames. As soft as the cloth may appear, the floor of the interior is harsh and bleak.

Oil on canvas, 48x60" (121.9x152.4cm) The vantage point is Zeus, as he looks down on Pandora. She is green with envy of the Gods. Her left hand is turning to stone, this is a punishment from the Gods, who have forbidden Pandora to open the box. My take on this Greek tale is there weren’t demons in the box, Pandora unleashed mankind and all the evil we are capable of.

Oil on canvas, 60x48" (152.4x121.9cm) This painting is from a photograph of my front yard one November morning about five a.m. There is a woman in the branches, she watches the atmosphere. The woman in the roots of the tree monitors the earth, the door represents above and below ground. The bullfrog is a bellwether for our environment in general. The shadows on the wall are watchers who watch those who watch. I used the ladder to balance the composition with a vertical opposite the tree.

Oil on canvas, 60x48" (152.4x121.9cm) This is my take on the first sin, in my version Eve has killed the serpent. I didn’t make the serpent very prominent to make the point that her reaching for the apple was her idea. The tree of knowledge is a stylize mosaic, each facet representing all the knowledge man will discover. The figure of Adam is shielding himself from God’s gaze. This figure of Adam is taken from Michelangelo’s Eve of the Sistine Chapel. Because Adam is closer to God, his surroundings have a uniform sameness. Eve is farther from God, her surroundings are random and fractured. As in physics, there is a theory, that in the beginning of the universe there was a singular oneness, but as time moves farther from the beginning the more varied things become.

Oil on canvas, 60x48" (152.4x121.9cm) As in the United States and most countries in the new world Black men have been one of the backbones of labor. Over time as slavery became a thing of the past, the need for reliable cheap labor continued to be exploited. Like all mankind Black men take pride in their place in the world, a way to survive the hardship of their station in this world. But if you could look inside their soul, you might see doubt, rock certain loyalty and asking an unanswerable question, Why ? The sky in this painting is the night sky I just happen to look up at just the right time to see a three quarter moon and halo pass by a break in the clouds. It was then I saw myself sitting on the fence, asking the question.

OIL ON CANVAS, 60X48" (121.9x152.4cm) The title of this painting is a play on the late governor George Wallace’s 1960’s ole to segregation. The unidentifiable images in the sky represent chaos, which feeds our hunger to pit black against white, the chicken or the egg, angel against demon and man against man. the disjointed figures represent this logic, if you can call it that, our flawed thinking.

Oil on canvas 48x60" (121.9x152.4cm) In this painting the old tower of Babel appears to be sinking below the horizon, slightly leaning to the left, rising above it is the new tower. The figures in the foreground are standing in a gathering of opium poppies, as they look at their hands, their heads displaying the same sunset that the cell phone atop the tower does. The poppies represents how addictive our devices have become. The scarecrow on the brick road stands below a blood red tree cradling a brain that has not been used, note the cobwebs.

Oil on canvas, 48x60'“(121.9x152.4cm) This painting is my statement on what we have become. I have made the earth flat to represent that we all have our own set of facts. The infant who can reach for the silver spoon, reaches for a syringe and the spoon to cook dope in. The red head stepchild of this great country has the axis turn into an umbilical cord that feeds him and his kind all the ills this land has to offer. The bullets represent our passion for killing, the one bullet facing outward is for all the soldiers who choose suicide. The flag has thirty pieces of silver, a reference to our superior profit making abilities, everything and everybody has a price. The jail bars represent our leadership in incarceration. This is a harsh picture, but I needed to say something.

Oil on canvas, 48x60” (121.9x152.4cm) This ethereal painting of a gathering of spirits coming together, who find safe harbor in the embrace of enchanted trees. To bear witness to the beauty of the first moment of a full bloom. When the sky opens doors rarely seen and roots that nurture come together to cradle the fleeting miracle. In the blink of an eye that grandeur has come and gone, all that is left is my memory of what exist between the past and the future, the eternal now.

OIL ON CANVAS, 60x48” (121.9x152.4cm) One can only wonder if our species will heed the warnings of our science, our common sense and what is right before our eyes, sea level rise, extreme weather, lost of polar ice, to name a few.

But legend has it that Nero fiddled while Rome burned and in a child’s fable, a grasshopper fiddled all summer while the ant worked and harvested the bounty of his labor.

So far to date time is running out to keep the world from warming beyond what we have been able to sustain, our growing population and our current standard of existence. Only a very few of us are trying to change our fate of a rapidly warming planet. Most of humanity is dancing to the same old tune of greed, apathy and denial. This painting is a testament to the latter.

The weather worn fiddle and the broken mast on top of the Chrysler building in the far ground are symbols of humanity’s folly. the skull, our demise.

OIL ON CANVAS, 60”x48’ (121.9x152.4cm) Women in the art world have been under represented and the muse for all they inspire are rarely more than a footnote in most artist bio’s But they are usually placed on pedestal but seldom do they share in the fruit they inspire. And when the artist is blocked from that inspiration, he finds himself off center and tilted, his imagination escaping, taking flight without him.

OIL ON CANVAS, 60”x48” (121.9x152.4cm)

OIL ON CANVAS, 60”x48” (152.4x121.9)

OIL on canvas, 60”x48” (152.4x121.9) AS long as this relic from the dawn of our republic still exist in any form in our governing institutions and in the hearts and minds of some of our citizens, the words, “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal”, will continue to ring hollow.

Oil on canvas, 60x48” (152.4x121.9cm) This painting was inspired by a view from my home in Camarillo, California, but before I finished the painting I move to Lathrup Village, Michigan, so I incorporated the view from my new home into the work.

Oil on canvas, 60”x48”(152.4x!121.9cm) My mood the winter of 2021

Oil on canvas 48”x60” (121.9x152cm)

oil on canvas

60”x48’ (152.4×121.9cm)

oil on canvas

60”x48” (152.4×121.9cm)