I see the world no longer as something separate from my mind.
After having been an artist for so many years, I now see the world as a living canvas connected to my sight and other senses. Every day when I look at nature around me, depending on the weather, my state of mind, or the natural sounds, the landscape transforms before my eyes and takes the form of a painting.
On windy days I might “see” the trees being beat about the atmosphere as Soutine painted his trees.
Walking down a city street the surrounding buildings begin to morph into a cubist arrangement of geometric design.
A chicken walking in a field on a stormy day becomes a torrent of motion and colour.
Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, nature becomes a painting. My thoughts are generated by colour, design, and texture.
I was given a very nice compliment the other day. A person who I hardly know at all came up to me and told me that she had read my book, THE MUSE, and she thought it was so good that every Art student in every Art department in America ought to read it as a required reading assignment! I thought that was a very nice thing for her to say. I also think it’s a pretty good idea.
The universe does not consist of physical “things.” Every “thing” is made of atoms and molecules and electrons flying and spinning and throbbing and colliding … and it is the INTERACTIONS between these atoms and molecules and electrons (the touching, colliding, intermingling) that produce the illusions of the “things” that appear to be solid and “physical.” That is how things “work.” That is how things become “created.” Some “thing” collides with and joins with some other “thing” and the collision produces a different “thing.” Keep this simple: when the atoms and molecules of your hand wave against the atoms and molecules of the air, they all collide with each other and produce a breeze. Think about that? Do you wish to “create” something new in or for your own life? If so, then you need to ask yourself, “What parts (things) of my life do I need to collide with and intermingle with other “things” in order to produce a new “thing” for my own life?” Teach yourself to THINK differently than how you have been taught to think.
Painting is my time machine. I can go anywhere in the world … any time in history. To be with Anyone. To a simple flower meadow, a forest in autumn or standing on a rocky Irish cliff overlooking a stormy sea in the light of a full Moon. From the sacred to the profane – I can be anything. I can live any life. I can dream any dream. With just a brush, a piece of canvas and some color. With only my thoughts … my inspiration … my Romance …
There is a recurring image that enters into my mind. Whether it is a memory from this life or one that came before I cannot be positive at this time. I’m sure it will come to me sooner or later. It is the vision of a large overstuffed chair with a flower print on it. The chair is sitting in a Victorian parlor and it is facing a window that has beautiful curtains pulled open to the light that is coming in from the outside. There is a large, wall-covering bookcase behind the chair and a beautiful wooden lamp table to one side of the window. The light coming in from the window has a golden, almost orange Glow to it that enters the room and permeates the air within the parlor so that every object in the room has a bit of that orange Glow tint to it. It is clearly late afternoon, perhaps 4 or 4:30 pm, and the Memory Glow has a real, physical warmth that I can actually feel even though the image is only a visionary moment in my mind.
Woke up to a cloudy, misty August morning here in Missouri … looking out my office window at 4 AM … getting a deja vu of a similar early Spring morning back in SO CAL when I was a teenager reading an Alan Watts book while sitting in front of the glass doors that opened out onto the patio where the parties in my book THE MUSE took place. You might say that the mid-1960’s was when my spiritual journey began. I didn’t just read art books, I poured through all of the popular philosophy books of that age as well. Alan Watts was just one of the characters I checked out back then; not as much as some of the others, though. Kierkegaard was big to me, so were Camus, Kerouac, Merton and Sartre. I also read Lao Tzu, Confucius, and about a ton of other “hip, in and groovy” pop-mystics of the time. I’m not sure what triggered this morning’s little Oriental moment. Perhaps it was the mist itself reminding me of the Guo Hua, the traditional Chinese ink and water paintings that seemed to be the favorite subjects for the covers of many of the books I read back then. Or maybe it was just some genetic “memory of a moment” that popped into my head just for the heck of it. Regardless, it was a very pleasant little feeling that will no doubt revisit me throughout this day.
The temperature here in MO for the past several days—right around the 100 degree mark. Many people are complaining about the heat and the humidity. I just remind them that only 5 months ago it was 10 degrees and there was sleet on the ground. I LOVE the heat and I love Summer. Every season brings it’s own unique light, but I especially love the light that comes with Summer. The Impressionists could paint Missouri in the Summer if they were still around. I wish they were still around. I’ve tried to paint that kind of LIGHT many times and I have come pretty close, but never close enough to please me.
It is impossible for me to choose which ONE artist is my favorite artist, as I have MANY favorites. Picasso is certainly up there, as are Soutine, Monet, Matisse, Moses, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin, Cassatt—too many to count.