THE VISION THING
1990, Oil on canvas
70" X 40" / 178 cm. X 101.5 cm.

A gloating George Bush peers out of rose colored lenses into the chaos that surrounds him. His shirt pocket bears the initials "J.B.", the Spanish initials for his name, a reminder of his Latin American adventures.

Wrapped in the American flag, he puffs with patriotic pride ignoring the ominous signs. He doesn't notice. His is not "the vision thing". Over his head, nine hooded figures, his Court, look down on him. Two play with the balance of justice. By his face hangs the victim of some racist lynching. Juvenile crime and capital punishment on the rise, a child sits on the electric chair just below. The clothes hanger is his solution to unwanted pregnancies.A homeless man huddles behind him. "It's our pleasure", reads the advertising on his beggar's cup, for there is such freedom in America that people are free to live on the streets if they choose.A stethoscope on the ground reminds us of the lack of comprehensive health care. It rests on a pink triangle, the raging AIDS epidemic. A casualty of anti-labor policies, an Eastern Airlines logo lies discarded next to it. The imperial fasces has tumbled. His world is upside down.

Art, music, literature, drama are under attack for political expediency and in disarray. Tragedy stares up at el presidente. Comedy laughs at the scene.

An assault rifle tells of escalating criminal violence. The junkie behind it shows us why. A child wearing a dunce cap, his back to us, sits on a stool. With 60 million functional illiterates, the education system is a demonstrable failure. The child looks on through the toxic fumes to a polluted horizon where evidence of foreign economic superiority looms ever nearer. Our fearless leader remains oblivious to it all even as a banner bearing a biblical proverb winds around his legs about to trip and bring him down. "Where there is no vision the people perish." But patriotism is, indeed, the last refuge of the scoundrel. He prefers imagery to reality. His is not "the vision thing". He is the illusion king.