Connected Soul

This painting was completed last summer. It took several months of work as it became quite tedious to finish because of the details. I started the project with a pencil sketch that I worked on at my school while not helping students. From there it went to the scanner and into Painter 12 where I filled in the colors and completed my overall design. I sent the file off to be printed on quality watercolor paper. The finished printed image worked out great as far as the colors and line work are concerned.
What inspired this work was the idea of transhumanism, the popular theme in which modern technology and humanity merge. They merge into something wholly different than what we are now. Certainly we have had a technological revolution in recent years with the advent of the smartphone. It has changed and is changing how we live. I myself am a consumer of these products and regularly use them. But are they good for our lives and our future. This question is yet to be answered. But it can be said that information is valuable and controls the destiny of humanity. Whoever controls information and the way we perceive information controls what we as people believe and therefore what we are to become.
In my painting all humanity is stripped from this beautiful woman. All that is left is her head the seat of being; the brain. She is plugged into the grid having all of mental activity monitored and controlled. That wonderful individuality that is part of each one of us is now taken away as all thoughts are part of the public domain. Transhumanists don't believe in a soul. We are merely animals or more precisely machines. Our destiny must transcend, in their view, these weak and corrupt bodies. The philosophy is wholly secular and atheistic. There is no room for God and humanity. They believe we decide our own destiny as humans. The scary aspect to this ideology is that as we all know people are fallible and our grand designs are not necessarily going to bring us to a good place.
In the painting the woman is looking towards the sky; upward, the universal symbol of looking towards something out there, something greater than ourselves. She does have a soul and it cannot be satisfied by the material world regardless of the grand inventions of technology.