Evidence-based Art Reflects Overcoming

The Power Of Love Over Hate

Some people insist evidence-based art should be 100 percent peaceful and serene and without any reflections of human challenges or difficulties. Based on my physical recovery experience (2 major operations within 30 days and over a year to recover), I politely disagree.

In the recovery process, people need lots of rest and relaxation—but we also need to feel hope. We need to feel encouraged to overcome our difficulties, even when that means complete restoration, only certain improvements, or sadly even acceptance.

One way to see this overcoming in art is to see a challenge or negativity in the background of a work and then have the foreground colors and images overcome it.

Here’s another video clip with a painting that does just that.

Below the video you can read the—not so peaceful and serene—actual story behind this evidence-based work called The Power Of Love Over Hate.

Here’s the story behind this evidence-based work:

I got trained to paint when I was only 7/8 years old. Today when I paint, I still go to that childlike, very vulnerable, and authentic part of my being and channel my art outwards. I live a happy, minimalist lifestyle, so most of the time when creating florals, I paint lovely art for the health and healing of others; however, on the rare occasion, the negativity of our world invades and can be seen inside my work.

When I began this painting, I was invaded by a worker doing a minor repair in my home/studio who started talking radical politics and would just not shut up. In his many words I kept hearing this message: I hate this group. I hate that group. Did you know this racial group is to blame for this? Did you know that cultural group is to blame for that? You need to support my political guy. If you don’t support my political guy, there is something wrong with you. Are you my enemy? Are you one of us?

As I laid the background stems for this painting, I was still processing how negative and dangerous this seemingly everyday American citizen was, and it inadvertently came out in the overly dark blue stem color I selected and in the over-intensity of my strokes.

Loving and hating others are human choices, and as I continued to work on the canvas, I kept choosing colors and images that overpowered the negativity of the stems and reflected the beauty and THE POWER OF LOVE OVER HATE.

Do Communities Benefit From Evidence-based Art?

I tell everyone I’m really more of an abstract artist, but because there is such a need in today’s world, I create (and sell lots of) Evidence-based Art for the health, healing, and happiness of others.

For most of each year, I like to live remotely along one of the Great Lakes in a small Northern Michigan town. Whenever I can, I try to share my evidence-based art freely with people in this town and the surrounding communities.

Here’s a little video clip I created and boosted on Facebook to let everyone in the Northern Michigan counties (and Mackinac County) know they are most welcome to visit a local business (with a really big heart) to see walls and walls of high quality, beautiful evidence-based art.

The viewing bench I bought has also been a really big hit with all ages.

Are the communities in my area benefiting from viewing all this evidence-based art? Based on the number of people who come in to buy a little artistic something of good cheer for themselves or as a gift, and based on the number of people who just want to come in and walk around (or sit on that viewing bench and stare), I think sharing my national/international evidence-based art on an ongoing basis has been a really big community hit!

My absolute favorite moments are when kids and teens come in. Often one or two of them will stop for the longest time in front of one of the paintings, and I can see from the intensely analytical look on their faces, they’re trying really hard to figure out just how I did this and just how l did that. I consider my art a gift—which should be shared!

(To see my ABSTRACT ART website, click on the link at the bottom of this post or go to dorotheasandragallery.com.)