James Surls: From the Heartland: The Grace Museum / Abilene, TX

“Now I must ask questions of myself. 

What do I do with what I feel, sense, or believe? 

Where do I slot my belief in a truth that has no proof other than what I give it from my own experience? 

Why am I confident in the reliability of something that cannot be touched or seen, yet is upon me as surely as the air I breathe? 

How can the actual states of matter vary so from one to another? 

Or does ‘paradox’ live with us always?

Are we so unique and alike at the same time that our thoughts can hold the contradictory and absurd within a reality and, doing so, express a possible truth? 

There are those in the world in the highest of learned positions who would ask, ‘Of what truth and of which truth and of whole truth do you speak?’ 

As an artist I answer all by saying simply ‘My truth.’”

 

— James Surls, From the Heartland