The view of Prospect Hill

Here's a landscape I painted last winter for my Mom for her birthday. It's hanging over the couch in the living room. I wasn't expecting it to come out this way, but I'm really happy how it emerged.

It's oil pastels with gouache and watercolor, marker, and acrylic on watercolor paper. It's about 4 feet wide by 18 inches high -- about 4x2 feet, with the frame.

I know it "works" because when I was getting it ready to give to my Mom, I had an almost overwhelming urge to keep it and make her something else. But I overcame the urge, and now a lot more people get to enjoy it than me.

New Work - Perimeter - in progress

I'm in the process of finishing up a new piece - Perimeter.



Here are the individual photos.

Some of them are a bit blurry -- I was focusing on the painting, not the photography at the time, which you can probably tell ;)

Still, it's coming along nicely. Now I just need to put the finishing touches on the piece... and figure out how to frame it.











It's 36" wide by 28" high - large format mixed-media piece that is a larger version of a work I did a few years back. It is composed of acrylic, watercolor, marker, and oil pastels on paper. I anticipate it being completely finished by the beginning of July.

Online it doesn't show as much of the great texture as I'd like. Oh, well. It's the kind of thing you need to "be with" to appreciate. All in all, I'm fairly happy with it. Can think of things I'd do differently next time, but for now... happy, happy. A good weekend.

I'm painting again...

And drawing. And wishing I had a whole lot more time to do it. It's been a number of months since I worked on anything visual -- most of my time has been consumed by coding and information design and trying to collect my writing and clean my study and update my various blogs and whatnot. Oh, and do social things(?)

I guess I got a bit swamped by all the stuff I've got around... And it didn't help that I had neatly organized all my paints and brushes and supplies in various containers and put them in areas I was intending to use for artwork... but never got to it.

Organization is fine and necessary in some respects, but sometimes you just have to create.

I'm getting back to my geometries. And my cardboard pieces. And my oil pastels and watercolors. Still trying to sort out what moves me the most -- 'cause no matter how important something may be, no matter how significant it may be to others, no matter how socially acceptable and status-invoking a certain activity may be, if you don't have passion behind it... the kind of passion that would drive you to do it, even if you weren't getting paid... well, chances are you won't have the stick-to-it-iveness to hang in there through the tough times, the dry spells, the painfully niggling little details that all make up the sum total of your Work.

So, what moves me?

Color. Shape. Light. Nice precise lines, along with texture.

More to come.

How -- and why -- (visual) art suddenly matters

Actually, art has always mattered. No doubt about that. Art (of many kinds) and music have been staples of human experience for as long as we've been able to draw figures and sing and dance and make stuff that is not only functional but also beautiful. They're staples of the human experience, and they have a way of getting to us in ways that only they can.

I'm going to talk about visual art, here. Much as it dovetails and consummately integrates with visual art, music is a whole other massive world unto itself, and I'm going to leave it alone for the time being.

There's a reason that art collections, whether corporate or personal, grow over time. There's a reason that art has become increasingly valuable over the past years. It's not just about art portfolios out-performing stocks and bonds and real estate in long-term appreciation of value. It's not just about striking a pose and chatting about your latest acquisition at a dinner party thrown for the parents of the kids your child goes to private school with. It's not just about making a good impression when you're standing in front of a piece at the MFA or MOMA or WAM and some good-looking (and apparently single) individual stops beside you to admire it.

I've been working with colors and lines and light for decades, now. I've been doing it in the privacy and comfort of my own home workspace(s), building pieces out of whatever was available, and being alternately surprised/dismayed/pleased/distressed/annoyed/encouraged/invigorated by the results. I haven't had a lot of formal training -- almost none, if you must know the truth. I've had a sort of "fringe" arts education -- hanging with people who have had the means and the opportunity to receive formal training, who assured me that what I was creating was every bit as inspired as what they came up with.

But I never really took it to heart. Art for me was always something that was, well, for me. A sort of poor-woman's therapy that kept me going through thick and thin.

And while I haven't shown a lot of my work to a lot of people, I have had a lot of time to think about art and light and color and lines... not in the context of a formal educational environment, but in the context of my own life, my own art, my own impressions. And the ideas and approaches and attitudes I've developed around art and its place in the world have had the freedom to grown and change in a sort of hermetically sealed one-way mirrored container of sorts -- always looking out, always looking out... reading various things along the way, contemplating those things, changing my views, adjusting my attitudes... all along the way...

And what this isolated thought process of mine has come up with, is that (visual) art is, in its purest form, simply information. Its lights, colors, lines, textures, shapes... it's all information. And it is non-verbal information that is actually a synthesis of and extension of verbal information -- a visual-spatial "echo" of the linear-sequential info we are constantly taking in, which sends out ripples of effect throughout the whole of our lives, the whole of our world. What's more, color and lines and shapes and textures enable our brains to synthesize the linear-sequential information, so that it can be integrated into our whole selves, and so inform our own growth and evolution.

Visual art, to me, is a complement and logical extension of this linear-sequential-information-rich modern world we presently inhabit. Each and every day, those of us who are connected with computers and other media are bombarded with information at a dizzying rate that probably would have driven our great-great-grandparents over the edge. We can't possibly take it all in. We can't possibly make sense of it all.

Unless, of course, we use art.

More work from last year

I'm working my way through my drawings and paintings from the end of last year, digitizing them and posting them. Eventually, I will get around to posting them individually with information on their media and original dimensions. The colors don't always translate exactly, but I'm pretty happy with how they've come out.

Here are some more:

Central Sun (October, 2007)

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Circus (October, 2007)

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Double Fuse (October, 2007)

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Feather (October, 2007)

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Gemini (October, 2007)

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Green Fuse (October, 2007)

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Gridlock (October, 2007)

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K-Type (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air I (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air II (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air III (October, 2007)

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Ode to Kandinsky I (October, 2007)

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Of Earth (October, 2007)

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Omen (October, 2007)

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Piet I (October, 2007)

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Ringlet (October, 2007)

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Self-Portrait (October, 2007)

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Splay (October, 2007)

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Stormy (October, 2007)

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Suess (October, 2007)

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Sundown (October, 2007)

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Swept (October, 2007)

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Treetops (October, 2007)

I'm on artaculous

I just signed up with Artaculous, an international art networking startup that seems to be kind of a combination of Facebook and Yessy. I'm still working my way around it, trying to find out how it all works -- and how I can integrate it into my other social networking sites -- Blogger, Wordpress, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter... and more. All this social networking stuff gets to be a bit overwhelming at times, but that's probably due to my borderline-OCD obsession with detail.

I am a very detail-oriented person. Problem is, it can all get to be too much.

Anyway, here's what I posted over at Artaculous. It's a start...

About me

I am a mixed media artist and writer who has been creating abstract expressionist art for over 20 years. I have been working in solitude for most of that time, and I only started showing other people my work in the past 2 years. I'm a firm believer that art is created first in the cauldron of human experience, and only when it is completed there, should it find expression through the media we use. Whether we are using paint or pastels, clay or colored pencils, I believe the true measure of our work is not our facility with our chosen media, but our familiarity with our own souls.

That being said, I consider myself an artist first and a painter second. My life is my art, and I use whatever media seems apropos to express what I am experiencing at the moment. I work with acrylics, oil pastels, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, marker, crayon, graphite... on paper, cardboard, canvas, canvasboard, and wood.

I have invested a great deal of my life in mindful meditation -- seeing what the true essence of a moment is. I have also studied the approach of artistic masters who devote countless hours not to painting or drawing their subjects, but to experiencing them, getting to know their essence, and reaching a place of innate, intimate understanding... before they ever start work.

Along the way, I have held a large number of jobs -- from working the graveyard shift at a styrofoam cup factory, to tutoring art history, to doing temporary legal secretarial work at some of Philadelphia's largest law firms, to supervising word processors, to building websites. I am currently engaged in the financial services industry, implementing emerging technologies at the enterprise level.

As far as my artwork goes, I am a firm believer in the ability of art to inspire and motivate... to transform the energies of human-inhabited spaces. I also believe that, in this day of exponentially increasing information, art embodies an essential way of communicating informational richness to the broadest audience possible. In "encoding" information through the use of color, shape, and light, an artist can both enlighten and unify the viewers in ways that connect the many seemingly disjointed aspects of our modern world. At no other time in history has art been so important -- particularly corporate art and art in public places. We all crave unity, we all crave connection. Art lets us do it in both highly sophisticated and lightning-fast ways. Art truly is the "written language" of our emerging world.

My art has been the one constant in my life, through the years, and given the enthusiastic responses I've received from folks who have seen my work, it's now time to make it available to the rest of the world. I've loved what I've created, and I've loved creating it. Now it's time for the babies to leap from the nest.

Meditations on vastness

Just under 4' x 8.5', Because Blue Always Forgives Red is the first large-format painting I finished last fall. I had a couple of other large canvases -- Blue Flame (4' x 5') and Rain At Dawn (4' x 9') -- in the works at the time, but this one I finished first.

I painted it for my sister, Carrie, who passed away in 1996 from cancer. It pretty much sums up how I knew and understood her to be -- carrying a great deal of weight and troubles, but still able to flow through it all with remarkable energy and grace.

Until last year, I had never seriously considered painting on canvas. It always seemed like such a big deal to me. And messy. And where would I work, anyway? But I got all fired up when my friend and fellow painter extraordinaire Stone Riley prodded and cajoled me into at least trying it.

So, I did.

I went out and bought some supplies, trucked them home, and we threw together some frames, stapled canvas onto them, and gesso'ed the heck out of them. Then we let them sit, and I started work on them a few weeks later. What came out of it all both surprised and frightened me a little. What I got was a wide swath of abstract colors, and two intensely dark works that just exude vastness.

I'm not sure where these two dark works "came from," but standing in front of them makes me want to fall to my knees in that abject sort of veneration I imagine the ancients felt in the face of Great Mystery. Whenever I show them to friends, they are moved -- sometimes to tears.

I, myself, am sometimes moved to tears. The depth is just so ... there. I simply procured the supplies, put myself in the mood, and then showed up with the intention to serve whatever Goodness chose to manifest itself through me. I'm sure it sounds all mystical and whatnot... and it was.

I really can't explain it. You'd have to see it for yourself.

To date, I have yet to stretch the canvases. I have them rolled and I haul them around to show friends and acquaintances, when I get the chance. I'm always interested to see how people take in the big, deep ones. Sometimes they're afraid. Very afraid. And they either freeze... or they back away and leave the room.

I still have to get pictures of Blue Flame and Rain At Dawn. It's pretty tough to photograph them without proper lighting. In any case, they are much better experienced in person.

And that's what you have to do with them -- not look at them, not intellectualize about them, but experience them.

And the vastness.

Improving my art space with feng shui

Mountain Air 3

10 inches wide x 7 inches high
Mixed media -- marker and oil pastel and watercolor and acrylic

Mountain Air 3 was created as part of an overall effort to "feng shui" my studio, which has a big chunk missing from the room -- ironically, the corner that's about self-awareness. I created a bunch of pieces that had strong blues and browns and blocky design in them and placed them in that corner, and the effect was palpable.

It actually seemed to help me be more comfortable in my space, become more focused in my work, and not feel this general sense of malaise that had dogged me, every time I went into the room, no matter how much "my space" I tried to make it. Let me tell you, it was a really weird feeling to have a studio of my own -- at last -- but not feel like it was friendly to me. When I feng-shui'ed it, that really changed. The improvement was dramatic, and my work really took off, as it hadn't in years.

I started out being something of a skeptic about feng shui, but after I made some simple but intentional changes to my space -- including adding a bunch of artwork that addressed the "energetic needs" of each quadrant of the room -- I became a real believer.

Kind des Bauhauses (Child of the Bauhaus Movement)

In my work, over the past years, I've come to appreciate more and more, just how strongly I've been influenced by the Bauhaus movement and other European artists who were working in the first half of the past century.

Indeed, I have to say that the Bauhaus movement, more than any other movement (including the impressionists and expressionists, of whom I'm very fond) has shaped my sensibilities and my art.

And when I look at the works I've been producing for the past years and compare them with the works and sensibilities of Bauhaus-related and inspired works, I get a better sense of where I stand in the grand scheme of things. I must admit, I have never been very diligent at studying past masters in the usual ways. And I'm not formally trained in artistic styles, I haven't had a classical arts education, and I am waaaay out on the margins of the art world. I tend to work in my own style, then cast about looking for folks who seem(ed) like kindred spirits, when they were working, and look for similarities. I'm an outlier, really. And yet, I'm very much steeped in some important traditions -- not only with regard to my art works, but with regard to my whole life.

Let me explain...

I was born in 1965, which was smack dab in the middle of the Cold War, and had this undertone of hardness to it that I believe got carried forward from WWII times -- indeed, both World Wars. There was a strong European influence in the American world I was born into -- in no small part, I think, due to the rather abrupt rise of the United States on the international scene after much of the rest of the "developed" world got itself all blown to bits. We Americans were suddenly thrust onto the world stage as world leaders (after having been pretty much consumed with getting settled on our own continent, sorting things out via (let's be honest), genocide and conquest and mowing down anyone and anything that stood in the way of our European-American Dreams. We went from being highly insular and focusing on getting our domestic house in order -- settle the West, build the cities, establish our industrial manufacturing base, quash rebellion wherever it sprang up, and define our American culture (more or less) -- to being the military and moral watchdogs of the world. Where oh where would we look for guidance in steering the world in the direction we saw fit?

We couldn't very well look to Asia, as Japan was still very much our sworn enemy -- they attacked us, after all. Africa had never been a source of "mastery" for us -- rather, slavery. The Middle East was a sorta-kinda fragmented collection of warring tribes (more or less -- no offense to anyone from there), so those models weren't apropos for our burgeoning American purposes, either. We needed some cultural precedents for world leadership, which were best (at that time) supplied by Europe. Europeans knew, from what we could tell, how to run things on a large scale. The conquest of the Americas (not to mention Africa and Asia) had been driven by European powers, so we could derive some "template" for cultural success from that heritage.

Yes, Europe would do.

Much as the United States has always been a melting pot, when it came to the cultural heritage(s) we tapped into, 'round about the time when I was born and first growing up, it was really Europe -- bombed out and reconstructing as it was -- that shaped my East Coast cultural experience. And the Bauhaus Movement had a huge impact on my environment. I'm talking, in particular, about all the architecture that was built in the aftermath of WWII -- during the Baby Boom, which immediately preceded my generation.

Note: For the record, I consider myself one of the first Gen-X'ers. I share many more of their qualities, than the Baby Boom. I'm just too much of a pragmatic, make-it-up-as-you-go-along entrepreneur, to be well-qualified for inclusion in the idealistic Boomer crowd.

The world I grew up in -- in particular, the school buildings where I spent most of my waking hours -- was strongly Bauhaus-derived. Look at the square, brick-and-metal, highly functional school buildings where I whiled away countless hours, and you'll see what I mean.



The front entrance of the first early childhood center I attended - note the front door -- all the blocky windows and the straight lines.



My high school, in its early days -- see all the straight lines -- it looks more like a factory than a school, to tell the truth.

There have been plenty of other buildings I've spent lots of time in, which had a strong Bauhaus flavor.

At least, that's how it seems to me. And I really believe that growing up and living my life in the midst of that predominating design had a strong influence on my visual and artistic sensibilities.

Or maybe I'm just the kind of person who gravitates to straight lines and highly utilitarian functionality...

In any case, looking at my relatively "unschooled" work -- after not really studying many artists formally, having no real background in art history or theory -- I see so many similarities between my work and my sensibilities and the Bauhaus Movement, I have to wonder where the influence came from, if not from a classroom or a course of study.

My true influence? Life, actually.

And for an artist, that's probably the best sort of influence, of all.

Why Piet?

One of the smaller pieces I created in 2007 -- or was it 2008? -- is a piece I've entitled Piet_1, in honor of Dutch Neo-Plasticist Painter, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944).



Looking at a set of Google search results on Piet Mondrian, it doesn't much look like one of his pieces. It's not full of straight lines and straightforward colors. It's actually very different from so many of the square-angled works of Mondrian... at least, at first glance.

But on closer inspection, it does have some elements in common:

• Common elements repeated -- the curved lines that intersect


• Similar colors to many of Mondrian's works -- yellow, blue, black, red -- without a whole lot of inter-mixing. Even in the places where the colors coincide, they do not mix -- they remain distinct, even in their overlapping.


• Blocks of single color -- the black squares and the blue areas

It's almost as though all those years I spent examining Mondrian had made an imprint in me, and then blended and swirled... gotten "swirled" by my own individual sensibilities.

In a very real way, it's as though the images of Mondrian I've absorbed over the years had turned into an optical palette of sorts... a pot of paint that, when undisturbed, has the Mondrian imprint on its surface... and my life, full of its own adventures and experiences, then reached down into the pot of paint with its own stick or brush or baster, and gave it a big swirl.

Piet_1 seems to be what happens when the undisturbed, imperturbable lines of Mondrian are given a good shake by an active, evolving life.

This is one of my smaller pieces, being 10 inches (254 mm) Wide x 7.75 inches (196.85 mm) High. It's mixed media -- oil pastel and water color and acrylic on watercolor paper. If you could see it in person, you'd catch the little sparkles that come up from the acrylic paint that's thinned with water -- one of my favorite aspects of acrylics. They turn into something different with each substance you mix into them... in this case, they have a faint sparkle to them, which makes a nice contrast with the matte watercolor paper.

This is also one of my favorite recent pieces -- I'm really happy with a lot of the work I've produced over the past couple of years (which I'm now carting out for all the world to see), and this piece has grown on me. When I first created it, I thought "What the hell was I thinking? How... uninspiring." But then I took a closer look at it, I thought about it and where it came from and what it told me about my evolving style, and lo and behold, it really grew on me.

It's for sale, but it's not framed. That's for the next owner to decide on. I'd probably go with a simple Bauhaus-like frame -- maybe something metallic to contrast with the colors. It's a subtle piece, and I think it would do well with a very simple frame. Whatever glass is used would be best chosen for its ability to allow light through to pick up the sheen from the acrylic colors.

It's a happy piece, and I will miss it when it goes. But I'm hoping someone else can gain some happiness from it, as well.

As always, if you like this work and would like to acquire a similar work of a different size or slightly different features, I am available for commissions. Contact me at kaystonerATyahooDOTcom for details.

I am neither painter... nor poet...

I am an adventurer who ranges far and wide to see what life has to offer, and then records my experiences in color and words. If color happens to use paint and canvas as its medium, or even pen and paper, then so be it. But it can just as easily find expression in wood, stone, clay, marker, colored pencil, graphite, oil pastel, watercolor... or on the monitor in front of you.

Acrylic paint on heavy canvas suits me better than the more refined "professional" supplies that promise to make a work of art an "investment" for the collector. And it gives me a broader, wider, deeper "vocabulary" to work with.

Just as written words, spoken words, felt words shaped and plied in solitude feed and sustain me far more than public performances or "poetry slams" (heaven help us).

These media give me a way to record/express/memorialize/archive my adventures in a shareable and (I think) exciting way. Through the use of color and light and texture... through the sing-song lilt of vowel and consonant... the nuances of not only what I've experienced, but also how I've experienced it, can be captured and expressed.

Through the eye and ear -- and through touch as well -- the full range of human experience can reach into the deepest centers of the brain and tickle the mind to new knowledge, new understanding, new appreciation, new experience, and renewed humanity.

I don't "think" art should ennoble us. I know it should.

Okay, so I've got all this art...

It's pretty wild, how much of it I have. I mean, tens upon tens of works, in a variety of media. It's like my poetry -- I have a lot of it, and it comes very naturally to me, so I end up not thinking much of it -- I mean, I do think much of it, but it doesn't make as much of an impression on me, while I'm creating it, as, say, coding up a web app or something like that.

For some reason, if it comes easily to me, it just rolls out, and I forget about it -- sometimes -- almost as soon as I've created it.

And since I often (usually) work in solitude, frankly, not many people know about it.

So, I'm working to change that. The web is full of social networking opportunities, so I need to just avail myself of them, I guess.

For starters, I've uploaded a whole bunch of my artwork to my Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaystoner/. I haven't gone in and created a whole bunch of descriptions (yet). I just got them up there.

There's plenty more where that all came from, and I'll eventually get to it.... But what I wouldn't do for an intern, or someone to help me organize myself...! Or someone who has a real knack for marketing... and who knows about art... Oh, hell - whatever.

I'm just glad I'm able to do this, and that I'm able to share all these pieces.

Maybe someday I'll find a benefactor who can help me get this out to the world. But in the meantime, at least I've got Flickr. And my blogs.

Engineering co-creation

It's the day of a Total Solar Eclipse, and I've been painting since about 5 a.m. I woke around 4:04, when the eclipse started (on the East Coast), and I tried to get back to sleep, but it was nothing-doing. So, I got up and went to my studio to see what was becoming of the pieces I've been working on.

I had given some thought to modeling some figures for friends of mine, to capture the spirit of the day, but I got caught up in painting.

I've been wanting to paint for some time -- with brushes, I mean. I do that type of work periodically, when I want to hone my brushwork. But honestly, it's just not me. I don't have that kind of dexterity to manipulate the brush pressure and direction, and my lines end up being more blobby than I want.

A whole lot more blobby.

Not good.

Now I'm presented with several choices that I can see:

Either keep at the brushwork and try like the dickens to sharpen that skill, running the risk of developing a skill that really isn't "me"... and losing valuable time in the meantime, when I could be creating works that are much more in line with what I'm like, and my orientation to the world. I figure I stand a pretty good chance of becoming a middlin' brush gal, if I keep at it.

Or I can cut my losses and limit my brushwork to occasions where I'm not as dependent on precision as my smaller works are... and develop ways to "engineer around" the blobbiness that tends to emerge from my attempts at straight lines. And let the paint do the actual work.

I choose the second option. Already, I'm coming up with ways I can not only have the precision that I want, but also work with the media I have in ways that are totally appropriate to them... and in ways that let them "do the work," using their very qualities to achieve the effects I'm seeking, rather than trying to impose my will on them.

It's an interesting concept I'm working with here -- how do I relate to my media? How do I work with them? How do I honor them as equal partners in the art I create, while still bringing my own vision through?

I think it's a new approach whose time has come -- a new approach for a new time.

The "standard issue" approach to creating art (and being respected as an artist) appears to be all about "mastering your medium/-ia"... putting in long years of work in your preferred media and then showing that you've got total control of it.

It seems (to me) to be the way folks go from art aspirations to art school to art vocation out in the world. And it seems to be what folks look for when they're considering the skills of artists in question.

But my approach is not to "master" the media, but collaborate with it. Learn its ways, its temperament, its moods, its inclinations... and then blend it with my own vision and bring forth something that is not all me, not all the paint/pastels/gouache/watercolor, but rather an amalgam of us all, equal partners in the creative process.

It sounds a little hokey to me, talking about "co-creating" artwork with the media themselves. A sort of "media animist" approach. But I am essentially an animist at heart, and I do believe that all things have spirit within them.

I'd much rather work with the media, as the media, and allow it to "do its thing" in the creative process.

Ultimately, what comes out of it is an exponentially greater expression than I could achieve on my own, by exerting my own "mastery" over the colors and textures I choose to work with.

New Online Gallery - ZeroPoint Images

I'm not much for words, right now.

But here are new images from my studio

Re: Testing my posting from afar...

It's time to start posting more of my artwork on this blog. I've got literally tens of pictures and paintings and drawings, and it's time I digitized them and put them up.

The past six months have been eventful in ways I can't even begin to express.

Now, it's time to get back to art.

Update before July is out...

I've been really, really quiet, for some time, now. I've been doing massive amounts of research on creative process and visual thinking -- just kind of following different threads, and seeing where they lead me. Researching as an artist in search of material, as an individual in need of explanations, rather than a hard-science inquisitor with facts to prove or disprove.

It's been a deeply personal process, and I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with everything I've found, but it's all grist for the mill. It's all material for my ongoing work, and in that respect, it's been a very productive number of months.

I've been drawing a lot. I've been writing a lot. I've been "distracting" myself a lot... which is what I used to think, till I realized (just this morning, in fact) that I haven't been distracting my attention, I've been deepening it. I just didn't realize until very recently, how it was all put together.

I really have to "trust the process" (much as I detest that expression) in this. Have faith that there is some underlying reason why I'm "scattering" my attentions and going off on different tangents. I really have to believe that the visual/spatial part of myself that's so very, very hungry for information and understanding, knows what it's doing, knows its own needs, and knows how to get itself fed.

I've been feeding that part of myself, lo, these past 8 months... or rather, it's been clamoring to be fed, and I've indulged it. I can't say that I was feeding it, 'cause at a very fundamental level, it wasn't a conscious choice on my part... I wasn't fully aware enough to 'get' that I was feeding it, only that I was running around in all different directions, compulsively consuming vast amounts of information about stuff that a part of me suspected might just be very, very important -- and it was.

Well, whatever the process, that part of me that was aching to be tended to, did in fact get fed. It had its fill (for now), and I am coming away from the past 6-8 months with a vastly more complete understanding of myself, my life experience, my way of relating to the world, my way of relating to myself and my friends and family, than I have ever had before.

So, the distraction has been well worth it. And I am feeling a whole lot more centered, more capable, more able, more connected, more comprehensible, than ever before in my entire life.

It's quite remarkable. But enough of the words. That's where I'm at right now, but only time will tell how this plays out in the world beyond my head. And that, for me, is where it truly counts.

New fractal artwork at my Imagekind Gallery

I've got new fractals posted at my Imagekind Gallery

Earth Burst
This round, reflective fractal holds the darkness and deepness of the earth, while at the same time nestling the intricacies of Gaia's innermost secrets along the meridian of the work. It stands in sharp contrast with Gossamer Burst - which is much finer, much more delicate than Earth Burst, and it makes a fitting compliment to Gossamer Burst, which feels much lighter and airier than this piece. This is a more "basic" treatment of the same concept -- as above, so below. Very much in and of the earth.


and


Gossamer Burst
This round, reflective fractal really jumps out at me as a sharp contrast with Earth Burst - it's much finer, much more delicate, and it makes a fitting compliment to Earth Burst, which feels full of earthiness. This is a more ephemeral treatment of the same concept -- as above, so below. But this time, in dreamtime.

The Art of Strange Bedfellows is now available online

The art of Strange Bedfellows is now available online at My Imagekind Gallery.

Giclee prints on paper, as well as canvas are available... and all of them can be custom framed at Imagekind.

Pay a visit to see what the artwork looks like on its own.

Sacred Geometries on Flickr

I've posted a collection of my early work on Flickr

Follow the link to get there...

Selected art - 20 years in review

I've been unearthing my collected artworks from various folders and notebooks around my study and the house... and getting some positive feedback from folks about it. Turns out, my lack of proper training in this area works in my favor, and according to an artist whose work and vision I have tremendous respect for, nobody is apparently doing quite the same kind of work I am, these days.

He also told me that some of my stuff is "seriously good", which comes as a surprise, 'cause I "jest do it"... I haven't sunk vast amounts of time into classroom instruction or classes or whatnot... I haven't been tutored by geniuses... I haven't gone to Paris or Florence to hone my craft. I just go about my day, go about my life, and I draw and write what comes up, as a result.

I've started scanning my collected visual works into the computer, and I'll be uploading them to this site, as I go. I work mostly in paper and colored pencil and crayon and some pastels and some markers and some black pencil and some ink, as well as mixed media, so the textures tend to get lost in translation, especially since my scanner leaves a little to be desired.

And so, without further ado... the first of my visual works I'm posting online -- from May, 1990:


5/90 - Graphite and colored pencil and crayon on paper. 8.5" x 7" Unframed

About this Piece
This work was created in May, 1990, when I was going through a great deal of transitioning around my life, my work, my relationships... basically, everything was up in the air. I was crashing at the pad of a friend, while I was looking for a place to live. Technically, I supposed I could have been considered "homeless", but it was such a heady time of great excitement and change, I didn't mind it at all. It never occurred to me at that time, that I was living on the edge. I didn't see the edge -- I was too busy looking out to the horizon, and I was a whole lot more excited about what I saw there, than what was right in front of me... which was changing rapidly, anyway.