Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success...

... When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.
- Tennessee Williams

I have been working on a Renaissance-styled Triptych, called "Wolf at the Door". It is a heart piece to my Fairy-Tale series, and one of the more allegorical things I have produced. Based on the story of the three pigs, they are locked away safe and secure in a fortress, blithe in their separation from the wolf - but this wolf has a savvy they had not considered, he has found the key to the door. Meanwhile halo'd bluebirds flutter blithly overhead, busy building nests from sticks and twigs stolen from the battered remains of blown-in wood and straw houses in the side panels

I am as guilty as anyone to have trusted the safety of institutions. I have believed that if I support governance, it will shield me from things I don't want to see. We have been brainwashed to this effect from the day we were born, and as a society we believe that if we march forward clustered as an army, building a wall that seems formidable will turn back the wolf.

The real danger in this is that we haven't ask the right questions -

Abraham Lincoln wrote - "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."

When looking for safety, the greatest danger is entrusting ourselves to an institution that surrounds us like a fortress - and in doing so becoming complacent. Belief in the strength of the wall belies the fact that in doing so we have undermined the very liberty we thought we had ensured. By doing so, fat and happy and asleep tucked into soft beds we are easy prey to the wolf to whom we have practically handed the key.

And who is the wolf? He is in us as well.