The Regime’s Candidate

Per­haps to com­pen­sate for the all absorb­ing media pres­ence of the US Elec­tion, it’s news that a legion of “hor­rif­ic prankster clowns” are ter­ror­iz­ing inno­cents all over the world.

The diver­sion seems appro­pri­ate because, like ever before, vot­ers are caught between “a rock and a hard place”… they’ll have to elect for Pres­i­dent “the less­er of two evils”. The whole thing made me recall a paint­ing from The Regime Series, start­ed in 1998, named “The Con­fer­ence of Ham­burg” — Inci­den­tal­ly, I used this trip­tych as a demon­stra­tion plac­ard dur­ing the world­wide ral­ly of 2003 against the inva­sion of Iraq-

At the time I paint­ed this, the Clin­tons were in the Oval Office, and had already over­seen “peace­ful solu­tions” to var­i­ous con­flicts such as in Yugoslavia. Mean­while Mr Trump was busy mak­ing big­ger mon­ey and host­ing Miss USA, and was teas­ing with the idea of becom­ing a Can­di­date. Not long after, in 2004, the Inva­sion of Iraq went ahead, a new dread­ful episode of the per­pet­u­al impe­r­i­al war.

Look­ing at the paint­ing in today’s light, I see both can­di­dates as the one and only clown. In this ver­sion, its Clin­ton­ian fea­tures are crowned by a Trump­ish hair­do. Here, there is no rock or hard place,only jokes exchanged between good (and bel­liger­ent) pals. All par­ties are eager to draw first one of those tasty fried bul­lets. The Can­di­date of the Regime is very excit­ed; check out the detail: the clown can bare­ly con­ceal a hard-on!

So per­haps this is anoth­er episode of syn­chronic­i­ty show­ing up in my art… or maybe just a time­ly con­nec­tion to avert the real­i­ty of the loom­ing hor­ror. Either way, the paint­ing speaks out loud; the Regime’s Can­di­date is exposed.