Lovebringer (Variable discount Editions)

This 20x28 inch print was created by carving a piece of mdf wood and using it as a matrix to print on archival paper. Very limited prints were created from this block. This particular print was colored using watercolors, and it is absolutely unique.

This piece called the Lovebringer is part of an ongoing series called "To the Beat of the Distant Drums", which you can find all the details about on my website: ginocastellanos.com

Love is perhaps one of the most difficult things to describe in precise terms. Most people utilize adjectives and metaphors in order to define it, and some can't do it without relating it to personal experiences. Love can be said to be the driving force that discount has kept humanity alive through the ages, next to the basic instincts for survival. Without love, mothers would not be able to take care of a fragile new-born and raise it for over 15 to 18 years, and we would kill off all of our elderly population, as soon as they became unable to provide. Without children and older people, we wouldn't have the ability to reproduce or to maintain our biggest source of wisdom. It is love that gives us the willingness, patience, and desire to raise a child and to teach them how to live properly, as well as to take care of our grandmas and grandpas, as soon as they can't do it by themselves.

But those are merely cold facts, and love can't be limited to just that. Love is quite possibly one of the most intense feelings we can experience. It can be wonderfully serene and shine life-breathing light into our souls in the moments of most profound darkness, or it can be the shattering force that breaks the very ground where we stood for most of our lives. Love can cause the brightest joy or the most aggressive mental pain.

Love is difficult to explain because it can morph into countless forms and can be the biggest influence on many unpredictable emotions and actions. Love gives us the comfort of knowing we are not alone. It gives us people to care about and that care about us. While on the other hand loves gives us the hardest trials in life, when we lose someone we cared about in death, or worse, betrayal.

Love appears, disappears, grows, diminishes, gives life, takes life, produces joy, and gives misery. Love can lead to happiness, maturity, responsibility, and growing strong, as well as to pain, despair, depression, murder, hatred, etc. It's like a big scale in our hearts, and balancing it in healthy doses can lead to good, while the opposite can cause total destruction.