Aim: Raise $1 million for Compassion International to help poverty stricken children in developing countries.
How: The very first sale of one of my abstract paintings will be auctioned to the highest bidder with all proceeds going directly to Compassion International.
I will only keep $1 for myself.
The reserve on the Younique painting will be $1 million dollars.
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To the best of my knowledge, no living artist has ever been successful in selling his or her first painting for $1million, so this is partly why I have called this the Younique Project.
I also believe every person who has ever lived is unique. Every life ever lived is unique and a gift from God.
Sometimes life can be overwhelming and our existence so seemingly insignificant, that we can feel powerless when it comes to effective change in a world so full of problems that need fixing.
What could I do to help make the world a better place?
Will my decision to act or not really matter and change the world significantly one way or the other?
Enter the Younique Project, my spark to set the forest alight.
I am only one man, but I believe in the power of one. Just as one tiny spark on a hot day under the right circumstances can ignite an enormous forest fire, so can one's decision to "act", like a spark, lead to a whole movement being set ablaze.
As an artist who has just completed the first in a series of paintings that are representative of my body of work, I have chosen to do something Younique.
In the course of my career as a commercial artist, I have created many illustrations and paintings that have come about as a direct result of a commissioning for companies such as Coca-Cola, Fox Studios and IBM and many others.
Whether they were to assist a company sell movies, computers or soft drinks, my work was a creation of someone else's design or ideas. This has been my commercial art phase and now it is coming to a close.
The work that I am doing now is abstract, non-descriptive but highly symbolic.
There is little reference to actual objects, people, or landscape as such yet the power of these images from their intuitive creation, bring about an individualised interactive experience for the viewer where these things seem to be present just the same.
My paintings are not planned and I just paint what seems to be right for the painting itself. The result is halfway between an ink blot test and trying to find the face of Jesus in the clouds.
In a sense by the sheer fact of removing or deconstructing literal objects the mind is free to find resemblances of objects, places, people and thoughts.
This tends to produce a liberating and explorative experience for the viewer.
After completing the 10 paintings currently on display in the Now Gallery, I was struck by one in particular that inspired me to be an agent of change, as it had such a tremendous impact upon me.
Although I was the painter or creator of this image, when I now looked upon this painting as a viewer and thought about what I was seeing, I was being introduced to the painting psychosocially for the first time.
I saw a man contemplating the future, his future, the world's future.
Here was a someone struggling to reconcile his own comfort and needs with the comfort and needs of the rest of the world.
What could bring him happiness and simultaneously bring wealth to others at the same time?
How could he restore the balance in a world whose social scales tip the wrong way too often?
The forces of good versus the forces of evil, ever present in a ceaseless struggle.
What could this one man do to make a difference and how would he act?
I will be revealing the Younique painting soon, until then it is up to you to seek and find what you may about my paintings, about yourself and your own personal reflections.
For some these paintings are not yet ready for digestion as everybody's taste is different but I hope to challenge you to think about how you can act even in a small way, perhaps like a spark to make a change that can build a better tomorrow for someone in need.
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