Does Anybody Know What Time It Is

Spirited Life Paintings By Dawn Richerson

Does anybody really know what time it is? This early painting explores the question no one is paying attention to. In a world of chaos, driven by self-importance and dedication to supposed duty and obligation, doing what's right and keeping up appearances, so many do not see that it is time for a change. Collectively, time is running out and yet the people go about their business, as if upside down in time and having lost their minds or given them over to the machinations of modernity. Too busy to see their collusion and their own participation in building the gallows that will clamp them in the years to come, they laugh at her when she tells them time is a trap, an illusion that will soon become delusion and still they drink their happy drinks and clink their champagne glasses even as the world cracks in two. Still, she cannot say how or when. She only feels the shudder and the shaking and so many hearts breaking and the speed with which it rushes toward them, even as they are unaware. This is an early painting (1998) from Virginia artist Dawn Richerson. A Spirited Life painting from the Dreams for a New World Series. What is your essential story of life? What is alive in you?