"Saṃsāra", Sanskrit, a Buddhist term for the cycle of reincarnations.

The woman with one eye is what I would call a "Cyclopean Receptionist". She was genetically engineered to not have a soul. Saṃsāra is often conceived of as a cycle or wheel of experience, and in this depiction the wheel revolves around the soulless eye of this Cyclopean Receptionist as though it were the eye of a storm. It is a storm of life in which their is a calm center of non-being and non-existencem a void, from which all emerges. It is the eye of a goddess through which you are received into death, and yet she has such a disarmingly windome personality that if you met her in the waiting room of a doctor's office, an opthalmologist's even, you would perhaps notice nothing out of the ordinary about her.

This painting is one of three that began as a short animation and then progressed to being a painting. This sounds backwards - animators often make drawings and paintings of there subject matter before animating, i.e.; "concept art" as it is known in the entertainment industry. Painters don't usually make animations and then create a painting based on the animation, but I am different . . .

The animation below is titled "Bedtime" and was made for display on Myspace. At the time I put out an announcement on Myspace that I was seeking music for the animation. An electronica artist from Germany named Sabitu submitted the haunting soundtrack that I created the videomontage. I took a bit of another animator's work and incorporated it, and then sent him the piece. He was nonplussed, and didn't care for my piece either, but taciturnly agreed to let me keep using it after I pointed out to him that all of his animations are also collages. If I remember that (very talented) animator's name I will credit him here.