It is a cruel irony that Florida would be called the "Sunshine State". It is an irony because the states of Florida are greed, vanity, violence, death, and obliviousness even though they are conditioned by the artificial air and the muscular sun. South Florida, the counties of Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade, is the financial and crassness center of these conditions. It is a place where the majority of advertisements in the local weeklies are placed by cosmetic surgeons.

But with all this darkness in the sunshine, I affirmed the warmth and beauty hidden in a place I used to loathe. I have changed as much as, if not more than, Florida has and by making friends with a former adversary I have chosen to find pleasure and light where I once only knew pain and darkness. This is not to say I intend to live in Florida forever. No, but as I continue to explore this strange and contradictory environment in my painting, I realize that there is a place for me to grow and countenance this light and darkness. It these contradictions that I am trying to mine as raw material and it is this paradox that explains my disregard for one unity of style, look, or subject matter in these paintings. What binds "Energy Plan for the Florida Man" together is the affirmation of paradox and the irrational, not the denial of them. This is why I painted the red of a 50-something single woman's lipstick, the orange of the honeybell, and the green of a freshly-mowed grass of a little league baseball field.
-Jorge Griego