A painting by the artist James Foort called: From Sight To Touch

From Sight To Touch

The emerald shaded area of the painting reminds me of an abalone shell inside covered by a translucent film of seaweed familiar in my boyhood memories. The idea contained in the painting is the hierarchy of love - “From sight, to touch, to desire and longing, to love, to joy, to celebrations, to the comfort of knowing we are bonded.” The meaning sets the male function to be DESIRE and the female counterpart, LONGING. The separation between desire and longing suggests the more predatory, possessive, in-the-moment, undisciplined male impulses compared to the more socially inclined impulses of women. Female dependence in the incubation stage sets mates to communicating on consequences. On the street where men and women with children pass me, they show these tendencies. The women want to pause and talk; the men, like anxious dogs on a leash tug at the women to get them moving.

The white eyes direct attention to the faint dotted attention lines of sight. The red hands reach out for contact. The red hearts, male genitals, point side down and female, point side up, pinpoint the biological intention of the life force to separate the genders. The frail body figures show what a primitive drawing with a charcoal stick in some secret, secure and safe cave might look like.

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Works and writing by James Foort