The Ten Commandments instructs us not to make a graven image. Why image, singular as opposed to images, plural?
It is a very good question, considering that at the time Moses presented the children of Israel with the Ten Commandments, the people of Egypt from where they had escaped, as well as all the peoples living in the region were polytheistic. The whole idea of the One God was uniquely a Hebrew concept.
So it would have made sense to prohibit images, as there were many other gods. And yet, when the Children of Israel created the Golden Calf, while Moses was up on the mountain, they fabricated only one calf, one image.
Why not two calves? Or one calf and one scarab? Or something else?
I believe this is due to the fact that we can only love on person or god the most, or more than anyone. There is the question of essential priority.
The Lord God of the Abrahamic religions of the Jews, Christians and Muslims is One and the Most High and Almighty. That concept of the Oneness of God, also denotes the holiness, or unity of the Lord. The Creator is not in conflict, self doubt or afflicted by any unexamined beliefs or fears, as we mortals are.
There is a Jewish belief that all of the words of the Torah ( Pentateuch ) can also be written as one long word, without any spaces. This is also said to be the or a name of God. The creation is a singular, unified whole. For every action there is an equal reaction, verifies the concept of this wholeness or unity of the nature of the physical universe.
The whole is the sum of its parts. So just as a painting may have many strokes (for me Hebrew letters), they add up to create the whole image of the painting. All of the parts of creation, from subatomic pre-particle waves, to planets and solar systems, combine to make the whole of the physical universe. The strokes in a painting combine to make the painting. All of an artist's work combine to form a body of work.
UnGraven Image uses the original Biblical texts, the letters from the Hebrew words, for each and every stroke in a painting. Thus the works are intrinsically unified, and one through their strokes.
The paintings are my view of the elusive reflection (again singular) of the Creator throughout the Universe. Since we all have really only one reflection, although it can be seen from various angles and in various lights, UnGraven Image must be singular since it is always about artistically rendering the Unified Creation that we call the physical universe, through the original words (Hebrew letters) of the One God. One God -- one image.
