Archives › Seeing
Welcome To The Crazy House
If you see things from a single, fixed perspective, you are normal. If you can see “both” sides of a situation, issue or event, you’re smart. If you can see 3 or 4 sides to situations, issues and events, you’re a genius. If you can see all sides of situations, issues and events, you will…
An Unlimited Frame Of Mind
Have you ever been talking to someone who’s unhappy with the way their life is unfolding and when you try to encourage them by suggesting that they have the power to change things, their response is less than enthusiastic? And if you keep pressing and offer positive examples of things that have changed for them…
Sometimes you just gotta shake things up and paint some bush babies.
A Show Of Paintings
Imagine walking into a gallery, long and narrow, hung floor to ceiling with dozens of paintings, all abstract. Each one is different from the next; the only real consistency is that you know they were all painted by the same artist. At first you are slightly disoriented, almost dizzy as you take in the vibrating…
Six Soliloquies Silently Screaming
It’s 3am and I just painted the worst painting I’ve made so far…
…Or is it the best? I guess that depends on your criteria, and right now mine are based on a whole other set of parameters. It’s made up of six separate paintings, painted quickly one after the other on sheets of drawing paper and then taped together. I make a lot of these very fast…
The Story Written In The Lost Language Stored In Your DNA
Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. …to be continued
Note To Self
This time of year, it can be enlightening to assess where you’ve been compared to where you are now, to see whether things are moving in the right direction. Looking back at where I was before I began painting in February of 2014, I find it hard to even comprehend how much has transformed. I…
Terraforming A Planet At 3am
Jets of colored energy fly off my left hand onto yesterday’s mistakes. Inhaling nitrous spitting magma, I build up speed and careen dastardly over the bleeding edge. Opulence arrives bearing gifts of deity Moonbeam yellow wanders elliptical Soot-encrusted aluminum Airborne at last I languidly devour the sky.
The Geometry Of Dreams
The horizon curves delicately around the periphery as your field of vision expands. Small dots of light appear, shimmering specks drift like dust motes suspended in sunbeams. There is the feeling of something pending. At the edges, shadows of colors slip past, just out of focus. Bright like candy, tantalizing, beyond reach. You inhale the…
Painting Without Limits
What is painting without limits? Exploring the unknown, the undiscovered, the unrepressed. Exposing the imagery of the mind, the visions that do not have a place in this world. Expanding the physical space of this reality into the infinitely larger space of imagination. Divining the soul. Saturating the canvas with feelings and sensations. Or covering…
The True Test
If you ever want to see if you can go without support or recognition, try creating something that most people think is pointless, odd or just plain stupid. Keep doing it and see how you feel. Say you want to bake pies. You could choose to bake apple or cherry or pumpkin. More than likely,…
Why Abstract?
Before I began to paint, buried underneath loads of compensating bullshit, was the feeling that whatever I might create had no right to exist. It wouldn’t be “good” enough, so what would be the point of creating it? Painting abstract changed all that. For me, it was the key that unlocked all doors. I genuinely…
Unplanned Adventure
Although I paint abstract for myself, I’ve been taking classes to learn how to draw and paint realistically. I’m doing it so I can apply these skills to the paintings I imagine. I don’t need lessons to paint what I see with my mind, but in these classes I’ve been trying very hard to paint…
Happy Accidents
This is an example of the paintings I make in between the paintings I feel like I want to show people. I typically do them fast, usually in a series of 6 or 8 or 10 at one sitting. Black acrylic on drawing paper. They’re not trying to be anything. They’re not trying to convey…
Formidably Hideous
This painting was an experiment. Everyone who’s seen it thinks it’s ugly. A few have come right out and said so, bypassing diplomacy altogether. Even when someone tries to go the polite route, I can tell by their reaction. There’s a sort of flinch. A mental recoiling backwards. I call that a success. There’s something…
The Gift
I gave this painting as a gift to someone and the first thing they said was “Are there hidden messages in it?” I said “Yes, and the more you look at it, the more you will see.” It’s true. There really are hidden messages in it. Except they’re not coming from me. When a person…
When I look at this, I see a mirror.
It is my self-portrait. Six pieces of paper painted separately and joined with masking tape to make a whole. All of my paintings are my self portrait. When I have 20 or 30 of them hanging on the wall, I feel that I am seeing my mind. The mind beneath the mind that navigates through…