Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: A New Landscape From The Whole Earth Festival

02 June 2010

A New Landscape From The Whole Earth Festival

Regarding my inborn tendency to overwhelm with gifts (karma/dharma that manifests throughout life in different ways: dominating conversations, pushing my little brother, smothering with kisses, recounting unified field theories): some things are poisonous unless ingested in homeopathically-small doses.

Like this newsletter: now weekly, and bite-sized. No more, "Oh God, time to turn off the phone and lock the door for an hour" posts if I can help it. Following the natural flow of things, because time after all is speeding up and we all need permission to ask for one another's attention. Short, sweet, and to the point...but every instant of time can open to a flash of eternity.

This week:
- Learning how to freeze eternity in paint to the end of expressing an indomitable innocence.

Next week:
- Promised new live recordings from the Love Without End Tour's Spring 2010 adventures;
- Timelapse video of the below painting during its twenty-four hour creation.
- Wakarusa paintings, OMG.

Thanks for looking and listening closer to your own whole wild lives, everyone – and of course, for exploring this particular newsletter when it sidles into your mindspace...

Any questions, remarks, or possibly-misguided attempts to give me money for my art and music – you know where I am.

• Imagery (full gallery here)

Finally, Release
2010 05 07 & 08 Whole Earth Festival
(Lynx & Janover, Faun Fables, Seven Sisters, Taarka, Boca Do Rio, Locura, Z-1 Project, Aaron Ableman, Makosa, Nada Brahma)
paint markers on masonite - 24"x40"
original painting available - make an offer
signed full-size giclees & poster prints - inquire

You'll have to click and enlarge this image to get a sense for just how much detail I put into each of the major elements in this painting. (Check out those double rows of gold along each petal of that sun...the multiple purples and myriad white speckles on each of the bufferfly's wings...) Its forthcoming timelapse video, two days handily condensed into about twelve minutes, gives a few minutes each to the grass and ferns, the butterfly, and the blossoming sun. There's an invisible breeze. Distance is distorted; the simple perspective forces viewers to acknowledge that our minds are responsible for sizing and placing everything, appropriate to our experience.

That's the thing about Davis, California's Whole Earth Festival – which, by the way is free, has been around for forty-one years, is held on Mother's Day, and used to be hosted by Wavy Gravy. There's an almost pornographic explication of interconnectedness at this event. We are wearing flowers in our hair and walking barefoot in the grass. We are crying for the Earth and holding hands and singing. How could I not paint something like this – simple, honest, straightforward, and green and gold and growing. Love is on parade.

I painted a lot of bodies at this festival. So many radiant people. You can find them in my facebook galleries...