New Barbarians
32″ x 48″ oil/canvas
Historically barbarians are described as those who overturned societies by revolution, invasions, and disruption. Some of these changes have been to the good and societies have been renewed, but my focus is on the present. In 36 countries, 30-40 percent of populations are youths are under 18 years. These often uneducated, unemployed, sometimes criminal youths are tearing societies apart: a subculture of wretchedness. I see these needy souls, the dispossessed, as another kind of refugee, who threaten civil and moral structures developed through time: lost souls that we come to fear and bereave. They overwhelm courts of law, prison systems and the general quality of life for the global family. Are we, I ask, losing a generation of creative young or witnessing another dark age?