December 2018

This series of paintings and drawings, titled Bella Ciao, are inspired by the anti-fascist theme song and the world, as Wordsworth wrote, being "too much with us".  Whitaker paints the friction between youth and the state as it seeks to further the violence required to maintain empires. His paintings evoke chaos,  pain, and moments of joy. Whitaker notes: "The young man recruited to invade Normandy in 1066 is the same young man that is recruited to bomb Iraq or join a local drug gang.”

Kevin Whitaker

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.