The road to paradise

Kasandra Patterson

Chester Arnold works

The road to paradise

In 1952 in the Golden State of California, Chester Arnold was born. Arnold’s work always had a political vibe, possibly because of growing up in post war Germany and perhaps wanting to share with the world the pain and hardships that many of us have not seen. The first time I came across Chester Arnold’s work was at the Nevada Museum of Art during the exhibit “On Earth as it is Heaven.” The piece that greatly stood out to me was “The road to paradise.”  The reason was because of the grand piano right in the middle of the piece. The piano caught my eye because music runs through the veins of society.  The art work was very focused on political views and the environment. In this piece, much is going on: it looks like the aftermath of a natural disaster; a broken piano surrounded by broken possessions and in chaos with what appears to be a water main break right in the center of it all. But looking at the painting more deeply, there is so much more.

It could be saying the music and the books and the art is being washed away by our over growth and us as Americans our love of waste. The painting has underlying meaning with all of the things we might associate with having paradise like a piano or having a tire swing and the perfect lawn only to be discarded as if it meant nothing. 

The name of the work is important as well: “The road to paradise” as I mentioned, what we think would be the road to paradise like a lawn which would mean you have a yard. How materialistic objects are the center of our universe. Is that really what paradise is to us? We as humans have a strange view of what is going to make us happy.