Library Mural

The far section, Logic, depicts blueprints of groundbreaking architectural works such as the Greek Parthenon and the Byzantine Hagia Sophia. In the top half of the Logic section these blueprints fade into brightly colored and highly idealized buildings based on margin ornaments from illuminated manuscripts. The fade from blueprints to idealized finished work is very important as it illustrates the way people think about things in the abstract. It’s not quite real and the imagined result is invariably different from the finished product. The central figure in Logic is both a builder and architect. In one hand he holds a compass showing the ideas and conceptualization that go into architecture and engineering, and in the other hand he holds a lever represent the practical challenge of bringing plans and concepts to realization.

Three figures dominate the section devoted to politics, the female figure representing Liberty is loosely based on Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. The figure holding a globe invokes the classical myth of Atlas, and represents the anguish and burden that comes with power. The third figure with his arm resting on a shield represents war. On his shield (based on the Shield of Achilles as described in Homer’s Iliad) there are images of warfare in the Modern Era; aircraft, artillery, armor and soldiers with firearms constitute the elaborate metal punch-work.

The Ethics section depicts an idyllic landscape full of stillness and serenity. Five stages of life are displayed in this scene: a baby sleeps in the arm’s of it’s mother, then children throw stones in a pond, a young couple walk hand in hand, a mother comforts her child, and lastly an old man sits in contemplation of the scene. Infancy, childhood, romance, parenthood, and old age are displayed as the different stages of life. Different ethics surround the different stages of life, and only the old man with his back turned to the viewer can reflect on the whole scene, as only a man who climbs a mountain can see the world clearly from above the clouds. He see his mistakes and what could have been, comforted, for better or worse, by the consolation of what is.

Epistemology is the study of belief, knowledge, the validity of information, and the nature of justification. Essentially the epistemological question is “Why do I know what I know?” Much of our knowledge comes from the words of others, in the form of books, journals, theses, et cetera. To reflect this, I’ve included a number of classic works of literature in the foreground of the painting, many of these books are books I have read and that I have found life changing or incredibly moving, but amongst all of this heavy reading I added some famous illustrations from children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupury. The other figures in these sections are representative of students and the various means of pursing knowledge whether it is by listening, looking, or doing.

Aesthetics is the field of philosophical study concerned with the appreciation of beauty, and to convey the feeling of beauty that stretches across the centuries I combined Michelangelo’s famous statue The Dying Slave with bright sensuous colors reminiscent of the modern artist Vassily Kandinsky. Among the bright colors there is the form of a violinist who passionately brings fourth a visual melody. Kandinsky’s intentions in much of his painting were to depict sound and music in a visual form, and I follow in his footsteps of composing music in the sounds of color.