A Summary of my book, In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil
I’m very close to finishing my book. It’s exciting and frightening at the same time. I tend to overthink and overdo things like this. The exciting part is that I feel I’m contributing something important to the world (my immortality project that buffers my existential terror). I know it sounds serious and maybe even a bit arrogant, but it’s important work to me, and I feel it’s the best I’ve made so far in my life.
Nothing is ever perfect; I don’t even like that word, but my book is as close to that idea as I can get right now. For the past several months, I’ve put everything on hold so I could finish this. I procrastinated doing it because I knew how difficult it was going to be. I’d written the bulk of the book in Colorado (over the winters there) and just had to tackle the editing and revising. I’ll have a rough draft of the text very soon.
I haven’t had anyone read it yet. If you’re interested in reading a draft and can give me constructive feedback, I’d be happy to send you a PDF when I have it ready. It won’t contain the artwork, only the text. Let me know if you are interested.
Who’s my audience? Anyone who’s interested in deconstructing existentialism and art. In other words, creative people that struggle with being, meaning, and significance. If you like art, psychology, philosophy, and history (plus a lot of crazy personal stories), you’ll like this book.
Chapter Six is almost 100 pages of artwork. It’s the final chapter of the book. I’ve just started the editing process for that portion. That will be a lot easier for me than the text has been. I hope to include a lot of work that’s never been seen before. I have some of my old Polaroid work from the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of my abstract, naive paintings that haven’t been published, etc. Plus the work from my time in the mountains of Colorado—that’s the bulk of the artwork—platium-palladium prints, talbotypes, calotypes, RA-4 color prints, cyanotypes, kallitypes, etc. all from wet and dry collodion negatives or material printed on contact.
Throughout Chapter Two (A Phenomenological Autobiography), I’ve included old, personal photographs of family and friends. It was the most difficult chapter to write for me. I’ve written stories about my life and how those experiences shaped me and led me to being an artist. I felt that it was important to share some personal, difficult stories in order for the work to make sense. I think I succeeded; the readers will tell me if I did or not.
In the book, I sought to distill decades of artistic exploration, existential inquiry, and deeply personal reflection into a single work. It is a book about reckoning—with history, with the self, and with the unrelenting shadow of mortality (the denial of death and death anxiety). As both an artist and a thinker, I have always gravitated toward the difficult, the ineffable, the truths we turn from in our daily lives. This book represents my most earnest attempt to confront those truths head-on.
At its core, this book deconstructs the human condition, peeling back the layers of history and psychology to interrogate the mechanisms that shape us: death anxiety, cultural worldviews, and the ways we “other” those who do not fit within our carefully constructed paradigms. Drawing heavily on the work of Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory, I explore how our collective denial of death fuels cycles of violence, fear, and division while also propelling creativity, culture, and heroism.
My writing is not just an intellectual exercise. It’s deeply personal, woven with stories of my own life—moments of loss, resilience, and awakening that have shaped me as an artist and a human being. From the landscapes of Colorado, where the Tabeguache Ute once thrived, to the internal landscapes of addiction, grief, and redemption, this book traverses terrains both literal and metaphorical.
The art itself—photographs of sacred landscapes, abstract paintings born of existential struggle—serves as both a mirror and a meditation. These works are not merely illustrations of theory; they are my way of grappling with the weight of impermanence. As Otto Rank observed, the artist transmutes inner turmoil into external creation and, through that process, finds a measure of meaning amidst the chaos—that’s what I’ve tried to do.
I don’t pretend that this book offers definitive answers. Instead, it is an invitation—a call to reflect, to question, to feel. If it succeeds, it will stir something in the reader, prompting a deeper engagement with the fragility and beauty of our shared existence.
In the Shadow of Sun Mountain is my offering—a testament to the power of art to illuminate the shadows, to reckon with history, and to remind us, as fleeting as our time may be, of the profound significance of simply being. And some may even find the answers to how I’ve “come to terms with death” through a creative life, gratitude, humility, and awe.