Artist Marcus Jansen in Naples

Lynn and I went to the Baker Museum in Naples Florida last week. There were a couple of cool shows, most primarily one by Marcus Jansen.

He is from New York, with a heritage of Jamaican via his Mother and German via his father. He studied art in Germany in the 1980s and came home to enlist in the Army in 1989. He was part of Desert Storm - the first Iraqi War of George Bush the Elder.

He returned with PTSD from the war to wife. They had 2 young children when the wife died of Cancer in 2011.  This show "Two Decades of Relevance showcases18 powerful paints by Jansen, demonstrating the artist's sustained preoccupations with power structure and their manifestations across different spheres, struggles of the disenfranchised and displaced, urban and rural landscapes, surveillance and technology."

The images are powerful and interesting. The two below seem to counterbalance the people pulling down the statue of Sadam Hussein vs the people pulling down a Confederate statue.

This is an image of Iraq being bombed. You can see the explosion. The look at the detail farther down.

Here you can see the message that the children are hurt, even when you try to avoid it. Further, behind the girl are two silhouettes that represent arms dealers, the only ones profiting from war.