keepyourcoins

Keep your coins

by Bob on February 20, 2008

I saw a photograph of this brilliant painting on a building wall somewhere. It depicted what seemed to be a homeless or poor person, ostensibly a mendicant, with a cup in hand, but holding a cardboard sign saying:

KEEP YOUR COINS. I WANT CHANGE.

Now this was absolutely brilliantly conceived of and executed by the artist. And the social message is so very appropriate. Coins are not enough to solve the real underlying problem. Some kind of big change is necessary to really fix poverty, homelessness, and the plight of these fellow people.

So I spent some time on the net tracking the source down. It appears to have been painted in Melbourne, Australia by a street-art artist named "Meek" (obviously a pseudonym) and is an example of a genre of graffiti and street art called "stencil graffiti".

It's a brilliant genre. And Meek when he was in London fell under the influence of the work of "Banksy" who is also considered one of the top artists in this genre.

So, whilst the homeless and poor are being swept under the rug and off the radar screen to most people in society, Meek makes it plain and clear through his art that the problem just won't go away so simply. And we should solve it as a community, country, world and planet in Gaia's image. If not just simply to keep the Golden Rule operating. Maybe even thinking, which seems out-dated in our modernistic, post-industrial society, "There but for the grace of God go I".

Definitely. And Meek painted it so very brilliantly in one simple but wholly complexly implicated image.