EVA LEWARNE | ALICE TODAY

EVA LEWARNE | ALICE TODAY

“By ignoring the reality of our existence, we are feigning sleep while awake and carrying on with life as if nothing is happening.”
-Eva Lewarne

Wonderland is a place of madness. ‘We’re all mad here,’ states the Cheshire cat.” Through the eyes of society, one who questions, and perhaps especially the seemingly basic things, maybe labeled mad. And society is, in fact, ripe for questioning between the extreme inequality of wealth distribution and the lack of real movement on Climate Change. Global Warming is causing floods, fires, and brimstones, and yet the Oil Industry is untouched, preferring to pray rather than quit mining.
It is the White Rabbit who leads Alice down the rabbit hole. It is he who woke her up from her daze since the hot day had made her sleepy.
By ignoring the reality of our existence, we are feigning sleep while awake and carrying on with life as if nothing is happening. According to a recent UN report, the death toll from devastating flooding in Libya’s eastern coastal city of Derna has risen to 11,3000. Fires are causing people to have breathing and lung problems. Hurricanes are devastating whole islands, like Hawaii and coastal shores. And yet we sleep, allowing billionaires to convince us that as long as their profits are intact, we will be okay.

“Artists, more than ever, need to be vigilant and vocal. No longer preoccupied with just abstract aesthetic values but speaking and shouting on behalf of the world and life.”
-Eva Lewarne

Capitalism, which may have served us well in the beginning, is now a rapacious, greedy entity eating our very lives. We have devastated Nature to the max, and Nature is rebelling.
It is the White Rabbit that Alice runs after and searches for endlessly in Wonderland, a symbol of her quest for knowledge. Just when things seem rather desperate, the rabbit appears yet again, and Alice drives on through.
Symbolically, this means we need to overthrow the warm fuzzy mantle of what was comfortable and face life head-on; we need to dance, shout, and act MAD to move the powers-at-be to change their course before it is too late.
Artists, more than ever, need to be vigilant and vocal. No longer preoccupied with just abstract aesthetic values but speaking and shouting on behalf of the world and life.
Lewis Carroll constantly asserts the essence of nothingness: ‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?’
Yes, the other side of earthly existence exists like a two-faced coin, but we will only really learn of it once we are dead. Nothingness awaits, but until then, we have a duty to fight for the survival of the earth for the sake of those humans yet to come.

EVA LEWARNE
ABOUT ME AND MY ART: A LITTLE STORY

Even as a young child, I was visual….and at 8 years of age, while everyone in the family was watching their new black and white TV, I was sitting on the floor with my sketch pad drawing their feet and hands. Mona Lisa hung above my bed, and across from her a Modigliani. I wanted to paint like that. I was also moved by the works of Peter Bruegel and Bosch. They inspired my compassion for the suffering of people. Bruegel’s “Beggars” and “Cripples” greatly impacted my view of what life must have been like for people in their times. I was more inspired by this work than by the portrait paintings of Aristocracy at the time. The paintings made me curious about my society and life around me, and I would observe and search out the faces of people who were suffering around me, trying to guess the cause of their pain. And there always was suffering, and I thought about ways to capture it on canvas or paper. My paintings became motivated by trying to capture emotions, not only pain but also other more subtle emotions like awe and pensiveness…and the unnameable and un-knowable ones, the mystery of life.
Mona Lisa is, to this day, shrouded in mystery; no one has been able to guess her state of mind and her story, and I think that is what I love the most.

I am a post-war child born right at the end of World War II in Poland. I have pictures of myself walking with my Grandfather among the city’s ruins.
Going to school, we took trips to Auschwitz, believing that if we see the millions of children’s shoes left behind, we will never make the same mistake. I cried and had nightmares for years after, yet nothing has changed when we look around. Many Hitlers have been born and died and still exist. As a young adult, I began to meditate as a way to find inner peace among the suffering of people everywhere. I began to study Zen and then Tibetan Buddhism with a Lama; it saved me from depression, and slowly, over twenty years, I began to realize that life is impermanent, dark and light, and rich in its design. My compassion grew without annihilating me in the process, as well as my appreciation for ordinary magic in life. And I embraced the dictum by Dogen Zenji that “My life is one continuous mistake,” and that is okay… I decided to work on myself; my mind was important to me. My Art is often the result of this study.

I live in a pretty prison, in our earthly existence, we take so seriously, so meaningfully, so righteously. But in reality, this body, this life, is but a prison confining us to merciless doing, suffering, rejoicing, and meaningless acts of boredom, killings, and daily survival acts in an attempt to prettify the whole thing, find so-called happiness and consume as much as we can of everything before we find our end. To add to the intrigue, we have sleep, perchance a dream, a mysterious encounter with our own shallow existence of our mind.
Then we discover God, a benevolent, sometimes frightening father that dispenses favor on some and pain on others. Maybe a mother would be better? No difference, really. It is time to face facts; this pretty veneer called life is easily ripped apart when the prison walls start to narrow and tear when there is no escape in view, no vacation from the fire eating up every shred of your hopes and dreams, and you can no longer ignore that all is an illusion and you have to make the leap into the unknowable void, emptiness and scary jaws of what hopefully is bliss.

“The other side of earthly existence exists like a two-faced coin, but we will only really learn of it once we are dead. Nothingness awaits, but until then, we have a duty to fight for the survival of the earth for the sake of those humans yet to come.”
-Eva Lewarne

Eva Lewarne is an internationally awarded artist. Lewarne has graduated from the Ontario College of Art and the University of Toronto. For the past twenty years, she has Exhibited countless Solo and Group Exhibitions in Canada, New York, Paris, Bordeaux, Barcelona, and Italy. Her work has been featured internationally in Art Magazines and books.

WHEN FACING DEATH | EVA LEWARNE
When confronted with an illness such as cancer that really has no magical pill but is at the mercy of trial and error by contemporary medical people, you begin to see what life is really all about.
And you realize that we all have a “Rendezvous With Death” at some point sooner or later in life. We are just another aspect of Nature, like the trees and birds, and our bodies will return to the earth. We are, in fact, “Earthlinks”.
But since you can’t believe that is all there is, as you have tasted Love and Soul, then you realize whatever more there is, it is all “Hidden In The Eyes.”
The bad and the good exist together like night and day, and “Bewilderment” is our constant companion. But if you look with Love at each and every moment, life is beautiful! And facing death transports you there like nothing else can.

Read the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #85