"Profiling"

A Previous Featured Painting

Profiling by Navar
" Profiling "
acrylic, oil & pencils on boards
16 1/4 x 27 1/8 in © 2004 Gabriel Navar

This painting, with its five internet "windows", features images and text that has to do with the kind of world that we live in at the moment. The title, "Profiling", relates to the current state of fear, anxiety, surveillance and inevitable resurgence of racism, especially due to legislative proposals in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President George W Bush signed the final bill, the USA PATRIOT ACT, into law on October 26, 2001. Though the Act made significant amendments to over 15 important statutes, it was introduced with great haste and passed with little debate, and without a House, Senate, or conference report. As a result, it lacks background legislative history that often retrospectively provides necessary statutory interpretation (including discrimination against people, specifically men, of color).

The "window" FEAR makes reference to the ticking time bomb of the trepidation that permeates our global communities. The red, orange and yellow bands of color symbolize the threat levels of the United States Homeland Security Advisory System where the higher the Homeland Security Threat Condition, the greater the risk of a terrorist attack. Risk includes both the probability of an attack occuring and its potential gravity. There are five Threat Conditions, each identified by a description and correspondign color. From lowest to highest, the levels and colors are: LOW=Green; GUARDED=Blue; ELEVATED=Yellow; HIGH=Orange; SEVERE=Red.

The "window" WHERE ARE THE JOBS? makes a direct statement about the current conditions of unemployment, out-sourcing, and layoffs. Monster.com is a web-site where one supposedly may find a great job and meet the right people.

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more Featured Paintings

Visit my Current Featured Painting "app 4 disgruntled days". It was currently added to my site on April 2013. Also, visit my Archived Featured Paintings, I have about 20 Previous Featured Paintings. Each one of them has a story, a description about their creation as well as some background about their form, content and symbolism. Looking at the Previous Featured Paintings page I realize that I have had a wide range of interests over time in the figurative, narrative work that I have created over the years. I hope you can appreciate that an element that ties my work together is my desire to create thought provoking compositions that involve the figure, rich colors, and, often, the human theater.


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