"As a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do."
- Ursula LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea
The last few weeks found me out on the road again – first, from a swirl of exit gigs in Boulder up to Edmonton, Alberta for the Motion Notion Festival; then to Portland, Oregon for a lesson in the permaculture and sacred arts of dying developed by medieval monks; then down the California coast for stops to paint alongside Alex & Allyson Grey at Trinity Tribal Stomp before sitting on a panel about the future of art at the Integral Theory Conference. (You can find a photo gallery from the tour so far on my facebook page.)
Hopefully, I'll be able to resolve the challenge of integrating hardcore travel with personal availability, and can turn this fall's forthcoming national tour (!) into an awesome live internet chronicle of discovery and creativity. (I'm definitely interested to hear suggestions for creative ways to engage everyone from the road...) In the meantime, you have my apologies for letting work pile up until we have to choke it all down at once.
There is so much more to come – music, presentations, timelapse videos, and small-format art – but for now, I hope you enjoy this flurry of recent live paintings!
Stay in touch and have a beautiful day...
(Click on any image to enlarge it – especially the process pics.)
Temporary Autonomous Zone Flag #1
.jpg)
2010 07 03, 05, 10 Mishawaka, Red Rocks, Fox Theatre
(Whitewater Ramble, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Hyde Thompson Band, Dechen Hawk, Varlette)
24"x24" - opaque pens on 1/8" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
The "Temporary Autonomous Zone" is Hakim Bey's idea of an anarchic ephemeropolis, based on the understanding that the universe is too creative for any one vision of perfection to stand forever. Even the most noble utopian visions eventually degrade into fascism as time marches on and our current ideals are replaced with newer forms...even the American Dream eventually became the American Nightmare. So the T.A.Z. isn't about revolutions; it's about insurrections. It's about knowing that nothing lasts and that we party here today in service of kosmic creativity, not our fixation to human political agendas.
And by the way, Oh My God, part of this piece was painted during my first creative sojourn to Red Rocks Amphitheater for their free July 5th Colorado Symphony show – all the good old American standards like the 1812 Overture and Yankee Doodle. Painting alongside Scramble Campbell, I now know why he's made that place his home away from home for live art...
In honor of Bey and Thomas Jefferson – America's first paleontologist – I dedicate this painting to the ongoing spirit of independence, exploration, and ethical humanism that drove this nation's founding, even though those ideals have now congealed into something horrifying. Here's to hoping that that T.A.Z. spirit – ecstatic, irreverent, erotic, and deviously, lovingly, tragically hopeful – finds itself again in all of us, like flowers growing from rotten meat. Constructive deconstruction.
Gestalt
.jpg)
2010 07 15 & 16 Motion Notion Festival
(Fergie, Cruz-ae vs Tristan Newton, Sundrop, Schwag Dankus, Lo Progression, k3v, Groovy Cuvy, Kristoff, Organic Manic)
23"x31" - opaque pens on 1/4" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
I'm sure this one had a lot to do with the incessant rain at Motion Notion...beautiful, but it turned the entire festival into a Woodstock-esque mud party and prevented me from wearing my white pants. And I'm sure it had something to do with the repetition of psytrance oontz for days on end. It's not often I limit my color palette so dramatically, but doing so deepened the meditative quality of this one, both during and after. And it's true to the incessant electronic rhythms in which I was bathing as this piece emerged.
This piece is dedicated to James Katalyst, organizer of Motion Notion, who gave me a fabulous reception and who nearly ran himself into the ground to put on a killer weekend of dance music. Thanks for having me up in Canada, James...and that includes "Thanks for letting me play the only acoustic guitar set at your electronic dance music festival, on the same stage as Bluetech, Blue Lunar Monkey, and Crystal Method." Aw, yeah.
Gate Crashers
.jpg)
2010 01 16 & 24 BMoCA & Trinity Tribal Stomp
(Fresh2Death, H1N1, DJ Grabass, Elephant Art Jam)
20"x30" - opaque pens on 1/8" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
Not a new piece, but considerably more deep and defined than when I first posted it. It was definitely missing something after the first night, and after months of looking at it funny I finally gave it the treatment it deserved. Something to the tune of "salts crossing a permeable membrane," or (since, I guess, salts don't have tri-radial symmetry) the collective and narrative version of this painting.
Tunnel To The Moon
.jpg)
2010 07 24 Trinity Tribal Stomp
(Dumpstaphunk, Clan Dyken, Garaj Mahal, David Starfire)
25"x31" - opaque pens on 1/4" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
It was a full moon in Aquarius the night this painting emerged in epic fashion from the piney woods of Northern California's Junction City Park. Garaj Mahal (a seriously amazing group, all musicians of rare talent) missed the dimly-illuminated turn-off to the festival and ended up getting there hours late – but it was ultimately for the best, because they played in the late night dome, at ground level, creating a house concert vibe that I haven't seen since...well, since they got screwed out of a gig in Lawrence, Kansas a few years ago and ended up playing an actual house concert. The rest of the music was fabulous, as well...Fareed Haque of Garaj Mahal played guitar with DJ David Starfire for much of David's set, which was a total treat – to say nothing of Dumpstaphunk's loose and delicious throwdown earlier in the evening.
And did I mention I got to paint alongside Alex & Allyson Grey again? If it's not obvious, creating in their company forces me to seriously step up my game. This painting has a few things going on that I've never even attempted, including an Escher-esque stairwell paradox if you follow the diamonds around in a circle (the rainbow ones are going in and the white ones are going out, which is impossible in three dimensions because of how they overlap). And the Fibonacci Sequence is in there in two different dimensions: both as Golden Spirals in the plane of the board, and also from five to eight staring down the tunnel at the Moon. Lots going on, here.
This painting is dedicated to Johnathan Singer, maestro VJ and the guy who coordinated the visual arts for the Stomp. What a mensch!
Fiddleheads
.jpg)
2010 07 25 Trinity Tribal Stomp
(The Wailin' Jennys, Freedom Tribe Reunion, Heyoka)
24"x24" - opaque pens on 1/8" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
A variation on a familiar theme...be they ferns, tentacles, or whatever, I'm obviously kinda hooked on the grabby swirls. These strike me as somewhat "mecha-caterpillar," like the self-assembling military robots in the climactic scene of Greg Bear's badass sci-fi novel /Slant. Look closely and you'll see the eight-pointed star motif that has become another of my calling cards, ringing out in rows through the resonant space.
This painting is dedicated to Alex & Allyson Grey for all they have done to inspire me and so many other artists...what else can I say?
Seraph Body
.jpg)
2010 07 17, 18, 25, 29, 31 Motion Notion, Trinity Tribal Stomp, ITC 2010
(Blue Lunar Monkey, Anahata, Bluetech, Adham Shaikh with John Wilkinson, Jay Michael, Michelle C, Cary Chang vs David Stone, Crystal Method, and during poster presentations)
17"x23" - opaque pens on 1/4" masonite
11"x17" poster prints for $25 - order
original painting available - inquire
The Caduceus, as a low-resolution map of the human subtle body, doesn't really translate here. Too many wings; not enough coiling. The serpents are joined at the bottom, where all five of the lower chakras are fused into a contracted nub. What's going on, here? Near as I can figure, we're looking at the corresponding map of a seraph or "burning one," historically related to the serpent, six-winged and unexpressed in its lower chakras (no material form) but wide open up above. A being of musical intersections and mathematical balance, reeking of eternity, glowing from within, too aware for human rationality to fathom without terror, rising calmly from the eternal flux of creation and destruction. (Tangentially, I find it extremely interesting that the angels nearest to God take form as burning serpents...)
I finally crossed the event horizon for this one and bought some empty paint markers to fill with my own colors. First stop: interference pigments like the pearlescent red filling the background space in this piece (even though it's hard to make out in pictures).
It'll be a while before I get over the novelty of starting this piece at an outdoor rave in the Canadian wilderness and finishing it in a Hilton hotel in California during the poster presentations at an academic conference. In the meantime, I dedicate it to Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, my once-professor and founding chair of John F. Kennedy University's Integral Theory Program. You changed my world, man.
More art next week. :)
