Artist's Interpretation:

Occassionally certain people, unknown to them, project a certain image which, if taken seriously, may cause them serious psychological harm. It is the modern disease of social intercourse. Almost everybody reads the same papers and sometimes the same books and as a consequence he will tell the same story. This very common and shallow knowledge is flaundered around specially at parties, at meetings and by telephone. If the speaker, by chance, is plauded for the few spoken words on a certain subject and his megalomanic aspiration blows up his ego, he will be eager to keep that image, and he will be openly blatant about it since he realizes that his audience knows less than he does. He might project the same image of knowledgeability on another subject and then on another, each time taking a new mask. With the passing of time his friends will remember him by his different masks and soon fear will undermine his mind for he knows that the moment his shallow knowledge is tested, his image will be broken, his masks lifted, his soul bared. So he rests with his devilish look on a turbulent sunset and his broken temple of knowledge on ephemeral clouds that will soon sink into a night of despair; not even the sailing vessel will help him to escape his inevitable downfall, not even his hypnotic eyes can freeze the sunset to make it last for ever.

Joseph Cusimano

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Additional Information:

• Color reproduction appears in Passage to Canada, page 67, image #6.
• Part of a series of three paintings: The Persistence of Time, The Temple of Knowledge, and The Fisherman Serenade