Finding Her Place in the Universe: Our Own Spiritual Journey

2016 was, for all intents and purposes, about finding and reclaiming my true self. As described to a friend, certain landscapes reached this year felt like I witnessed them before birth and I have been making my way back to them ever since. My next mixed media piece symbolizes and illustrates this.

The lapse of time spent working on this piece spanned close to a year. The sunface came first. When I created her in the early part of 2015, I had no idea what would ultimately surround her or where she would end up. The round sunface spent several months sitting in the art studio, watching in silence as I worked on other pieces. Occasionally, I would look into her eyes in search of where she belonged, but to no avail. Then one day, while working on another piece, I had what I like to call a "happy accident" with some acrylic paint mixed with water. Just before I discarded the paper it was on, I thought, "wait a minute," and on a whim, I cut out some triangular shapes. The paint just so happened to go with the paint I had used on the sunface from several months before and these triangular shapes would go on to become the rays around the sunface. By the summer of 2015, the sun was assembled and complete. I placed her on a sheet of white paper, where she remained while the backdrop to the piece came together over the next several months.

Independently of this, I used the same "happy accident" technique to create swaths of blue, black, and purple throughout autumn. What I thought would be the foundation for a different piece ended up serving as the backdrop to this piece. Leftover pieces from a holiday craft project found their way into the piece in January 2016. These strips of blue construction paper with gouache were added to bring intrigue and asymmetry to the composition. The final element emerged in early February. While listening to Gustav Holst's seven-movement orchestral suite, The Planets Op. 32, I was inspired to create planetary bodies out of semi-diluted acrylic paint. With those in place, this sun truly was

"Finding Her Place in the Universe"

From the time we become self-aware, we seek to understand ourselves and to discover our purpose in life and our place in the world. Some step into it with ease, others have to search for it for years, and still others never manage to find it. After years, if not centuries or millennia, this sun has found her place. She has her own corner of the universe that's as unique as she is, where she is safe and accepted, where she has devoted satellites, where she can reach her zenith, where she is free to just be. Through this piece, I began to understand my own place in this vast universe.

Featured in this post: Finding Her Place in the Universe 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Signaling the End: Sandstorm of my Mind

Sometimes being an artist is like being a cryptographer. The universe gives me messages that I have to decode. Instead of breaking the code with words or numbers, I rely on the language of colors, shapes, patterns, and textures to reach the place of understanding. With the next piece in my portfolio, I did not know what I was creating, or the meaning behind it, while working on it. Even when it was complete, I still knew as little about the piece as when I set out to create it. For the first time ever, it wasn’t until I began writing this blog post that I began to break the code and thus understand what the piece truly represented.

I was first introduced to Peter Gabriel’s superb score, “Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ”, in Autumn 1999.  I was immediately mesmerized by the score which varies from epic, sweeping tracks to minimalist pieces. Naturally, some of the epic tracks are stand-outs, but some of the more subdued and obscure pieces really shine as well. “Sandstorm” is one such track that has always been a silent favorite of mine.

It wasn’t until 17 years later, one morning before dawn in April 2016 when I awoke unable to calm my thoughts, that my connection to this song would come to fruition. In the early hours of that morning, I stepped into the art studio, inserted my headphones, scrolled directly to "Sandstorm", and instantly I felt it reflect the spinning chaos of my emotions. As the music pierced my soul, I began creating the initial layers of what would become this piece. At the end of that first painting session, all I had was black, white, and grey on the paper. “And this means what?” I asked the muses, to which they gave no reply.

Work on this piece spanned several days without knowing where it was taking me. The only thing that was disclosed to me was whether or not I was finished. More often than not, I was told to keep working. Each time that I returned to work on this piece, much like donning a mask, I would step into the music, channeling its energy. As the tempo would build and swirl into a climax, the muses would guide me, whispering that it wasn’t finished. As such, I would create the next layer.

As mentioned above, even after its completion, I did not know what this piece was. “Great, I made an abstract sandstorm,” I initially thought to myself. The second I had that thought, I knew I was on to something, that this was an interpretation of a sandstorm. I couldn’t have known what this represented because I had not yet decoded the underlying message. A few weeks later into the middle of May, I chose the title, but I still did not fully understand this piece.

Through practicing Mettā, I am learning to reside more in my heart and less in my head. Through this practice, I have realized that often my heart comes to a place of understanding and acceptance well before my mind does. In the previous November, I knew in my heart that the long term relationship that I was in was over, but there was a disconnect between my heart and mind. It wasn’t until I set out to write this blog post that I understood that the swirling tempest that pulled me from my sleep that April morning was foreshadowing. My heart was communicating to my mind, signaling the end, and with my mind's reluctance to embrace it, it manifested into the turmoil and chaos that was the

"Sandstorm of my Mind"

Featured in this post: Sandstorm of my Mind 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Somnium for Sarah: Communicating through the Unconscious Mind

Sleep. For weeks on end, my best friend got plenty of sleep. She was in an induced coma following a freak accident. Anyone who knows my friend knows that she is the queen of bizarre and vivid dreams. She has written about them often and in explicit detail. 

Each of those initial days following the accident, when we didn't know if she was going to live, when we all would flinch at the notion or sight of death's door, felt like an eternity. After the shock and grief subsided, I was nothing. I had no one nearby to turn to, due to various circumstances. It was all I could do not to become unhinged. For the first time in the 18 years that I had known her, I couldn't pick up the phone and call her. I couldn't hear the soothing voice of my wise Leo friend. I couldn't begin to imagine the dreams she was having while in a coma. When I realized that she couldn't simply wake up from any of the dreams she was having, feelings of uselessness began to set in. I sought ways to tap into her unconscious mind to communicate with her. Then one day in mid-November 2015, I decided it was time to turn to art and music for guidance. 

With the album Sleep by composer Max Richter playing as inspiration, the muses guided my hands while creating this piece, so much so that I feel it is more their piece than mine. This piece is also a bit of an anomaly for me, in that I created it all within the span of a day. I began by painting areas with watercolor and applying alcohol for added intrigue. Then, taking a cue from my previous piece, I applied artists' tape to conceal stripes within the areas of different color. From there, with acrylic paint mixed with water in spray bottles, I painted over everything. First I applied white paint. Then I added pieces of white lace paper to use as a makeshift stencil when applying the pale yellow color. Interestingly enough, when I removed the lace paper after applying the second round of acrylic paint, pieces of it adhered to the painting. My initial response was panic and frustration, but as I looked at it, I realized that it gave an added feeling of softness, of dreaminess, almost like faint clouds. For that reason, I decided to leave those pieces of it on and chalked it up to being a "happy accident". 

With each musical note and with each brushstroke, I begged the universe to intercept her flashbacks of the accident and bring them to me. In return, I would give her

"Somnium for Sarah"

Featured in this post: Somnium for Sarah 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Glimpses of the Truth: Life Lessons in Art

When I began work on this piece, I had no idea of the phases and changes it would undergo. I started this piece at a friend's art studio one afternoon in January 2015. I was simply playing and experimenting with watercolor. I put down several large brushstrokes in three different colors and that was the extent of it. I left it at her studio to dry and several months would go by before I laid eyes on it again. That summer afternoon when I finally saw it again, I brought it home and unrolled it onto my kitchen table, where it sat for several weeks as I continued to work on it. I added more watercolor, which added greater density and complexity. I didn't know where I was going with it, I just kept painting. Eventually I reached a point where it became a busy, almost garish conglomeration of watercolor. Unsure of where to take it next, I set it aside.

Verbal exchanges, unpleasant situations, and some serious life events took place while it was on the back burner. Each of these things forever altered my perspective and my life, and in keeping with that difference, I switched to acrylic paint when I finally returned to this piece in November of the same year. For that last phase of work, I started by covering the entire piece in an extremely thin layer of white acrylic paint. Then, using a silicone blade while still wet, I smeared the white paint, revealing some of the underlying layers of watercolor. I was happy with the result and the effect of the multiple layers; however, the piece was still not complete. 

If the events that had taken place taught me anything, it's that when my intuition gets dragged into a situation, then there is almost always more going on underneath the surface. What better way to mask everything than to cover it with solid black. I cut out strips of artists' tape and placed them directly onto the paper. Then I proceeded to slather everything with generous amounts of black paint. I smoothed it out with a silicone blade and let everything dry. When the time felt right, I gently lifted the edges of the artists' tape and began to peel off the strips. What I discovered is that when you begin peeling back the layers of subterfuge, you get:

"Glimpses of the Truth"

Featured in this post: Glimpses of the Truth 
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Refraining from Entanglement

That moment when you realize that you've come full circle, when an experience from a previous relationship plays itself out again in a current relationship, is, in a peculiar way, rewarding. It's especially rewarding when this time around you're applying the lesson you've learned. Suddenly, the past makes much more sense than it ever did.

In the spring of 2010, there was an escalating issue in my family that was spilling over into the relationship that I was in at the time. The person I was dating was unhappy about my family situation, and rightfully so. Being the peace-keeper that I am, I was trying to cater to everyone. It worked only for a short while until I could see the anger building in the person that I was dating. He kept wanting to get involved and I repeatedly asked him to let me handle it since it was my family. He eventually reached his breaking point, and, against my wishes, got involved. What ensued was an unpleasant verbal altercation between him and a family member of mine. In the end, the relationship imploded, I had an ugly mess to deal with in my family, and there was no peace among any of the parties involved, which was the opposite of what I had wanted all along.

Flashing forward to the summer of 2015, I was in a different relationship, but a similar situation was starting to arise. As discussed in a previous post, my partner and I had gone through an unpleasant and unacceptable experience with his family a few months before. So this time around, the tables were turned and I was in the role of witnessing things occurring in my partner's family that I disagreed with. Part of me wanted to get involved (in a less explosive way than my ex did) to stand up for my partner, but I struggled with what to do and how to do it. When I presented a few ideas to friends of mine, they advised against it. So out of sheer frustration, I did nothing. As an escape, throughout August and September, I created:

"Refraining from Entanglement - Cognitive"

"Refraining from Entanglement - Associative"

"Refraining from Entanglement - Autonomous"

All three pieces from the series are composed of watercolor and acrylic paint. Beyond that, the elements of each piece varies, with some containing molding paste, gouache, gesso, and various material to help create the shapes and patterns that you see. The series title "Refraining from Entanglement" was inspired by a composition titled "Entanglement (Reprise)" found on the soundtrack to the film Senn. I listened to it repeatedly while I created the first piece of the series. The subtitles from the series "Cognitive", "Associative", and "Autonomous" are the three stages of learning. 

The orange (cognitive) piece came first. It began with the smaller solid orange vertical lines. From there, I created small strips of differing hues, patterns, shapes, and textures. Once completed, I immediately began work on the purple (associative) piece, applying what I had learned from the previous one to this one. After this one was complete, I thought I was finished with this project, but a few weeks later, the green (autonomous) piece decided it needed to be made. Again, I built on what I learned by creating the previous pieces.  

It wasn't until that first piece was complete that I realized what was happening. By creating this work, I was avoiding getting involved in my partner's family's affairs. The artwork represents the idea of separation with each section remaining separate and confined without mingling with another section. Had I allowed the sections of paint to mix, the unique colors and patterns would be lost resulting in a cloudy, muddled pool. In the same vein, the aftermath of stirring things up with my partner's family would be nothing more than a mess. 

Some have disagreed with my stance on this and think that I should have spoken up in the situation. I can see the inclination to do that, especially in the age of social media where everyone is prone to give their opinion on everything all the time; however, my getting involved in the situation would only have made things more difficult for my partner and I might have jeopardized my role as his ally. As I learned from my ex, even when a situation is unfair and you fully disagree with it, unleashing your anger and spouting off your opinions won't help your case. Sometimes, the best course of action is to do nothing and continue observing, remembering, and refraining from entanglement.

Featured in this post:   Refraining from Entanglement - Cognitive     Refraining from Entanglement - Associative     Refraining from Entanglement - Autonomous 

All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

Unleashing Creativity with Naturally Dyed Eggs

While I am by no means a traditional guy, the exception for me is that I love dyeing eggs in the springtime. It's an activity that I enjoyed as a child and now as an adult it has become a sacred ritual that spans 2 days and is reminiscent of the building excitement of Christmas to a child. After not dyeing eggs for many years, two years ago on a whim, I decided to dye eggs again and attempt it using natural dyes. I gathered a few ingredients (coffee, tea, turmeric, and grape juice) and winged it. I had mild success that year. Of the dozen eggs that I dyed, about 4 or 5 of them turned out. That experience in 2014 taught me a lot, which I applied a year later when it came time to dye eggs again. I was also better prepared with the proper jars and a more extensive list of ingredients. I achieved significantly better results in 2015 with all 16 of the eggs I dyed. After posting photos of that year's batch online, a few people asked me to share my process with them. It took me a year, but I am sharing that now through this year's batch.  

Friday

Typically, my egg-dyeing ritual begins on Friday. This photo shows the ingredients used in my 2016 batch: purple kale, cherries, cranberries, yellow onion skins, red onion skins, dried day lilies, blueberries, turmeric, match green tea, beet powder, blackberries, dried hibiscus petals, pomegranate, and asparagus. Two additional ingredients not pictured here that I used were red wine and rooibos tea. Of all of these, only three of them yielded no results: asparagus, pomegranate, and matcha green tea. I learned afterward that the trick to using pomegranate is to boil the peel (I had only the insides of a pomegranate). It's also worth noting that the cherries yielded a pale brown, which can be used as a base or second color, but it's not quite up to par to be used on its own. A very important fact that I learned after everything was in the fridge: most varieties of North American day lilies are toxic, and for cats they are lethal. I removed all unused day lilies from my house immediately and left only the ones that were already "steeping" with the eggs. Even though the day lilies provided a pretty bluish-grey hue, I discarded those 2 eggs after photographing them so as not to take any chances. (In 2017, I will purchase Chinese day lilies to use because they are not at all harmful to consume.)

With the purple kale, hibiscus, turmeric, and beet powder, I included them in the pot of water to cook with the eggs. I also added vinegar to help with transferring the colors onto the eggshells. It's important not to overdo the vinegar. As I learned in 2014, too much vinegar will soften your eggshells and the dye ingredient will soak into the egg. If you use only enough water to cover a single layer of eggs in a pot, then add no more than 1/4 of a cup (4 tablespoons) of vinegar. The yellow and red onion skins were also cooked in the water with the eggs, but they do not require vinegar. Onion skins are potent colorants and the more skins you use for dyeing, the more pronounced the hue will be. As for all of the different berries, I cooked the eggs separately and then combined them afterward. These fruits do not require vinegar, either.

For the ingredients that you boil along with the eggs, transfer the liquid into the jar. Using a spoon, gently lower the eggs into the jar. Adding the food items (kale leaves, onion skins, etc.) will give a unique pattern to the eggs, so if you want solid colors on your eggs, do not include the leaves and skins. For the fruits, I usually only partially mash them and then spoon them into the jars around the eggs. Again, use only the juice if you want a uniform, solid look to your eggs. If you want to create different designs and patterns on your eggs, anything that you can place between the dye and the eggshell will work. Popular items include rubber bands and tape, but let your imagination run wild. The best way to learn is to experiment. When finished, seal the lids and place the jars in the refrigerator overnight or longer.

Saturday

The vessel in which you "steep" your eggs is important. Ideally, you want a tall, narrow jar so that you can include several eggs all while keeping the liquid as concentrated as possible. In 2014 I made use of various items in my kitchen, but for my 2015 batch, I purchased these 1-liter cylindrical jars made by Weck. I used them again this year and they are absolutely perfect for dyeing eggs. On Saturday, if the sun happens to be shining, I will remove the jars from the refrigerator and place them on the windowsill to steep in the sunshine for a bit. On Saturday is when you will want to transfer your eggs to another color or add/alter the items (rubber bands, tape, etc.) on the eggs. If you're using an ingredient that isn't giving you the results you want, now is the time to change your plan for those particular eggs because this will be your last chance to make any changes to your eggs before they're finished. 
   
At this point, I often peek into the jars to see what is happening with the eggs, much like marveling at the presents under a Christmas tree. The wonder and mystique is exhilarating. The excitement for what's to come when I unveil the eggs is palpable. I eagerly await Sunday morning.

Sunday
The culmination of your excitement and your work comes with the big reveal on Sunday morning. The elation that I felt as a child tearing into Christmas presents is echoed in unveiling the dyed eggs, although I find that the reveal of eggs has a more satisfying payoff, perhaps from the aesthetic qualities of the eggs combined with the gratification of knowing that I created them myself. Either way, the experience is euphoric for me. Pick a jar and start removing your treasures. You will want to handle the eggs as little as possible so as to preserve the look. Depending on the ingredient used, you can rub off some of the color for a paler look, if that is your preference. However you decide you like your eggs to look, you will want to blow dry them, which helps to preserve the look. Once dried, I gently rub mine with olive oil, which intensifies the colors, patterns, and contrasts found on each egg.

As discussed previously, last year's batch brought about an emotional turning point in my creative identity. Naturally, I went into this year's ritual with a slightly refined process, an arsenal of magical energy, and my most ambitious roster of ingredients to date. The outcome, pictured in these 2 photos, did not disappoint, with 22 striking eggs in the end.

Like previous years, 2016's experience came with its own lessons, which I will likely apply next year. As you begin to do the ritual over time, you can start to see parallels between your emotional space and your creative output from year to year. In 2016, I needed an abundance of vibrant colors and so that is what I produced. 

Start your own egg-dyeing tradition, whether by yourself or with your children, and see where it takes you. Leave me a comment about your experiences or any questions you may have. Which ingredients work well for you? Follow the links below to view photos from all of my egg-dyeing rituals. Whether you celebrate Ostara, Easter, or Spring, make it a colorful, beautiful one.   
   
Featured in this post: Eggs for Ostara Series 3 No 1   Eggs for Ostara Series 3 No 2
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.

38 Years Through the Camera Lens

I owned my first camera when I was 8 years old, and I have been a photographer ever since. I was utterly fascinated with the art form. The ladies at the pharmacy in town came to know me by name-- not from buying baseball trading cards, but from the steady stream of film that I would bring in to have developed. I don't remember the cost to purchase film, but I do remember that in 1985 in Derby, New York, developing a 24-exposure roll of film cost $6.42. From the time I dropped off a roll of film, I eagerly awaited returning to the pharmacy to retrieve the long envelope stuffed with 24 visual surprises. In those days, so many of the photos I took were not good, but I was fascinated and determined to continue. Over the next 10 years, I owned various point-and-shoot cameras, the makes of which I hardly recall. Any opportunity I had found me taking pictures. The photos were still far from being great, but I was becoming more cognizant of what makes a good photograph.

In 1995, at age 18, I received a refurbished Pentax K-1000. It was my first SLR camera and a handsome piece of machinery at that. I cut my teeth with that camera and I studied photography with it in college. As a result, I made great strides in my photography. At that point, I had stopped creating non-photographic artwork and focused on photography, making it the sole form of artistic expression that carried me into adulthood. Twelve years of using the Pentax left me with so many memories of it; some of them wonderful, some of them painful, but they are powerful memories, nevertheless. I resisted the initial onset of digital photography due to its inferior quality and continued to use my Pentax until 2007 when it stopped working. Shortly thereafter I received my first digital camera: a Minolta DiMage 7i. By that time, digital photography had advanced enough that I was eager to experiment. To my surprise, the new camera, an SLR-like camera, was a significant leap forward from the Pentax. I continued to sharpen my skills as a photographer; however there was a significant drawback with the Minolta: instead of using a rechargeable battery, it required 4 extra-strength AA batteries which would take only 40-50 photographs. Aside from the environmental concerns, at roughly $10 per pack, the cost for batteries was prohibitive and the possibility of running out of battery power during a shoot was an inconvenience. Whereas the Pentax enjoyed a long life of relevance and functionality, that of the Minolta, being an early digital camera, was ephemeral by comparison. I worked with the Minolta for 7 years until it stopped working in 2014. 

Both the Pentax and the Minolta had been gifts, both from men who tried to control me, and with the Minolta breaking at a pivotal period in my life, it was only fitting that I was the one to choose the camera for this next chapter. Enter the Sony Alpha a58, a gorgeous DSLR camera. I went into the camera store planning to buy a Canon, but after learning that I could get the same mileage from the Sony that I could from the Canon at nearly half the price, I opted for the Sony and used the money that I saved to buy a macro lens. If the jump from the Pentax to the Minolta was like landing on the Moon, then going from the Minolta to the Sony was like reaching Mars. I was floored by the quality and the precision. With the Sony operating on a rechargeable battery, I am free to shoot hundreds of photos without worry. Some of my best accomplishments in photography from the first year with the Sony include:

(To learn more about each of the photos, please visit their pages in my portfolio through the links below.)

Brushstrokes of the Cosmos

An Elegant End

Kissed So Gently

Nature has always been my subject of choice in photography, and I have spent more time in nature this past year trying to capture it than ever before. My life is starting to revolve around when to best capture sunsets and seasons, and I am happy with that being my focal point. When I am creating non-photographic artwork in my studio, I am in communion with the muses; when I am creating photographic artwork in nature, my spirit transcends this body and encompasses the living creatures around me. 

This upgrade and shift couldn't have come at a more opportune time. While rediscovering and reclaiming my identity as an artist, this new camera allows me to reach greater heights in photography. A longtime friend of mine has been asking me for years why I am not a professional photographer. My answer, "I am one step closer now." It is my destiny. After 38 years, the view through my camera lens has never been more magical. 

Featured in this post: Brushstrokes of the Cosmos   An Elegant End   Kissed So Gently
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art America. Thank you for your time and your support.