New Digital Art & Collaborations, Festival Announcements, HUGE Guests on Future Fossils

Hey friends!  I wanted to save this one until I could update you about my biggest, most intense collaboration yet – but if I wait any longer this update won't fit into your inbox!  

So here's the quick and dirty while I still have the creative winds at my back.  You can see the new monster-in-progress, the mural from Waterloo Music Festival, here.

Quick reminder before the news stuff:  here's the updated list of all of my available paintings at their new discounted prices, and here's days of my electroacoustic guitar music for the healing of your ears and heart.  

Enjoy, be well, and stay in touch!

best

Michael

NEW PAINTINGS

Gonna start sharing more new work made on iPad with Procreate – I'm still learning the ropes with this amazing software but you can expect more and more of my work to be digital, in part because of the automatic time-lapse video feature that lets me share the entire process of every piece.  

Make sure to watch the time-lapse video for this piece, with a profound voiceover from Future Fossils Podcast guest Terry Patten...

"Wholeness Wants To Have Its Say"

Buy Prints • Watch the Time-Lapse

Also, five new tiny canvases mark a wave of collaborations with my partner Nicole Taylor – all of these are available and very affordable, and support the best cause you can imagine (loving creation).

You can find these pieces and many others in my full gallery list for collectors here.

 

NEW PODCASTS

In addition to new episodes of Future Fossils Podcast with some of the coolest people I know (!!!) I also appeared on the warm, wise, and funny Ramin Nazer's Rainbow Brainskull podcast recently.  Here are the links to all of those:

 

 

 

FESTIVAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

After a slow festival summer, it's turning into kind of a crazy festival fall!  Here are some of the bigger and juicier events I'll be part of over the next two months – playing music, teaching workshops, and making live art:

"Hemingway once said that the most important preparation for a writer is to have led an interesting life, to have something important to tell the world. If you place yourself in situations where there is no choice but to move forward, no option but success, you create a momentum that in the end propels you to new levels of experience and engagement that would have seemed beyond reach only years before. Creativity is a consequence of action, not its motivation. Do what needs to be done and then ask whether it was possible. Orthodoxy is the enemy of invention, despair an insult to the imagination."

- Wade Davis

Too Many Wonders? You Decide: New Live Albums, Time-Lapse Video, Salamander Painting, Coloring Book, & Podcast Episodes

Whoops – I guess I went a month without updating everyone about the new work...you were probably as busy as I was so let's just call it even.  Hope that this newsletter stays inspiring, not overwhelming.  God forbid that I contribute to the distraction avalanche.

If you'd prefer a bite-sized update every time I make a new thing as opposed to monster digest updates like this one, there's always Patreon (and if you've been enjoying my emails for years, I hope that you'll consider making the migration – subscribers helps immensely and I make a point of showing you I love you).

As an aside, I just republished some of my old fan-favorite essays on Steemit: "Ode To A Paradigm Shift"; "Transformational Festivals Are A Symptom of Dissociation"; and "A Manifesto For Live Painting".  And I was on my friend's great podcast Third Eye Drops again, this time (Episode 102) discussing the evolutionary biology and mythological dimensions of MONEY.  I say a lot of things I haven't said on record anywhere else, on a topic that is pretty key for all of us.  (Don't know when I will say more on these things, but I really should...)

That's all for now.  Thank you for opening this message and I hope you benefit from what's inside.

love

Michael

New Coloring Book Time-Lapse Video:

"On James P. Carse's Finite and Infinite Games"

Youtube • DTube (Steemit for Video) • Vimeo

I have decided to make the coolest dinosaur coloring book ever – AND the coolest reptiles and amphibians coloring book ever.  At least those two.  As I complete each page I'm giving every Patreon supporter at $5 and up the PDF and PSD files for it, to print out or color on a tablet.

I'd love to make more integrated coloring book time-lapse + music + podcast excerpts videos like this one above a bigger part of what I do – but I'm stretched pretty thin right now. So to that end I've mademore coloring book pages and more videos the object of my current Patreon stretch goal (to make a clean $1000 a month on that platform, which isn't too too far away...)

Here are pictures of the first dinosaur and reptile coloring book pages, both of which have extensive backstories dating back to my childhood that you've been spared, here:

Derp Alert!  

New Barton Springs Salamander Painting

for the Save Our Springs Alliance

24"x18" – acrylic paint on canvas

signed cardstock and canvas prints here

This spring I took a part-time gig with Save Our Springs Alliance and I'm finally starting to feel like a citizen of Austin. You all know how much I care about the history of place, and it's awesome to sink into the decades-old lineage of conservation work this organization holds and continues. Austin's one of those rare cities that has not yet totally destroyed the natural resources that made it beautiful to live in in the first place...

Austin's Barton Springs is home to a totally unique salamander that exists nowhere else in the world. I painted this to raise awareness of the valiant efforts by Save Our Springs Alliance to preserve the habitat of this beautiful creature, and to alert people to the importance of the Edwards Aquifer in general – which is also the source for clean water for millions of people, and is currently endangered by both deregulated development within city limits and secret fracking about 40 miles west of Austin. This piece is the second I've made of the Barton Springs Salamander, Eurycea sosorum.

Wherever you live, take care of it. Other creatures depend on you. If you live nearby, you can support the Save Our Springs Alliance by donating here.

New Instrumental Album: Live at Flowstorm 2018

Spotify • Bandcamp • Feedbands • Patreon • iTunes

Google Play • Tidal • iHeart Radio • Napster

For those of you unfamiliar with my music, you're coming in at a very good time.

This set was improvised live on acoustic guitar, pedalboard, voice, and iPad Pro to an international audience of professional flow artists: hoopers, fire dancers, poi spinners, and many others.

This informal collaboration, as well as the glorious Central Texas wildflower eruption all around us, and the sweet song of the frogpond in the distance, led to what I believe is one of my strongest instrumental freestyle sets of all time.

(It also happened to be on the Eve of Easter and on the third anniversary of my first gig - also at Flowstorm - with my beloved guitar Charlotte, a Taylor 322e.)

All of the tracks are named after local wildflowers. The album art is from one of my greatest inspirations, the legendary Ernst Haeckel, author of Art Forms in Nature.

New Live Double Album: Live at Arcosanti

Bandcamp • Patreon

Recorded live on 11 and 12 November 2017 in the amphitheater of the legendary Arcosanti, Arizona – an historic experiment in ecologically-integrated architecture – for Convergence, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between visionary architects, artists, and permaculturists.

Arcosanti is one of the most inspiring places I've ever been and playing there was the fulfillment of a dream I've had since I first visited in 2005.  The vibe was high, the desert winter beautiful, the crew and venue incomparable. This double album is a landmark record of the sweet, ripe moment when it all came true – if only for a moment.

Most people have no clue that I've been a devoted songwriter since 1999 and that my music matters more to me than almost anything I do...the songs on this live album are the fruit of that long practice and I've polished each of them with love and patience over years.

This really was a magical concert and I'm glad I get to share it with you.

New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

with Doug Rushkoff, Charles Shaw,
Tim Freke, & Steve Brusatte

Lastly – here are four of the best episodes of this podcast I've ever had the honor of releasing.  The show's on every platform, and you can find links to the show's page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. in each episode's show notes:

Patreon • Steemit

Patreon • Steemit

Patreon • Steemit

Patreon • Steemit

That's enough for now.  I'm sure that you agree.  ;)

Gratefully Yours,

Mermaids, Kittens, Cyberpunk Guitar, The Black Madonna

“All things are inherently pure and it’s more like our projection onto that that is less than pure.  The Christ saw the Magdalene in her essential purity."

– Jake Kobrin on Future Fossils Podcast

Happy holidays everyone!  This is a stressful time of year, but also rich with opportunity for spiritual growth and lovingkindness.  May your days be full of light and nights be full of loving...

Here is my latest work, of which I'm very proud.  I hope it makes your life a little sweeter, smarter, more inspired and optimistic.  Enjoy and have a lovely week!

love

Michael

:: Compulsory Holiday Discount Announcement ::

I'm doing some fairly epic discounts for your holiday shopping this year.

Through 11/29 you can take 40% off all of my prints, pins, and stickers by using this link or using coupon code "GIFTING" in checkout.  

And until I decide otherwise, you can take 20% off your ENTIRE order by using this link or using coupon code "MEOWMEOW" at checkout.

I'll honor similar discounts for my original paintings – and even more (60% or more) for trades in cryptocurrency.  I cannot overstate how empowering the boom of interest in cryptoassets has been for me and my fellow artists and I'll be exploring the social implications of Bitcoin, Ethereum, IOTA, and others in the weeks and months to come.  Email me back if you're intrigued.

New Paintings!

Daughter of Neptune

(48"x24" - acrylic and oil paint on canvas)

prints here

Painted live at Convergence at Arcosanti (check out their promo trailer with my music here) and the grand opening of Austin's new visionary art mecca, Gallery Lucid.

Read the story of this piece and check out fine art reproductions here.

Cats on the Brain 

(16"x20" - acrylic and oil paint on canvas)

prints here

Painted at home as a commissioned pet portrait for my friend, voice actor Elizabeth Maxwell.

Read more about this piece and check out fine art reproductions here.

New Music!

Produced in the collision of guitar and electronics, these compositions (including three brand new pieces and one re-imagination) form a soundtrack for our anxious age of forcibly transparent lives online – a dark-bright hour of atmospheres for our drone-shadowed landscapes and spook-haunted social media existences – a heralding of something more beyond the paranoia, some new self and sense emerging...

Stream or buy Life in the Glass Age on Bandcamp and 50% of the profit supports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  Patreon supporters at the $5 level get this album (and ALL of my new music) for free – you can dive in here.

(And you can see the promo trailer for P3M5's production at The Vortex in Austin here.)

New Podcast Episodes!

This week’s guest is my friend Lindsay Loftin, a professional mermaid who uses her performances to raise awareness of marine conservation issues.  She also boasts 60 pushups in two minutes and the ability to transform phone-addicted schoolchildren into avid gardeners. Listen here.

This week’s guest is visionary artist Jake Kobrin, whose digital paintings explore a gorgeous, dark, evocative terrain of non-ordinary human experience and twist religious iconography into a metamorphic form well-suited to our psychedelic modern era.

We discuss his painting “Black Madonna” and the return and healing of the repressed feminine – not just women, but the body, the psychological shadow, marginalized peoples, death, and transformation…  Listen here.

Oh!  And I appeared on my friend Matt Belair's podcast, Mind & Spirit.  We talk about fractal time, futurism, and adapting to accelerated change.  Enjoy!

Happy Halloween! | Playing at Arcosanti | Alien Queen & Cello | Velociraptor & Embellishments | Magenta Ceiba on FF

“Abandon all hope of fruition but do not fail to strive.”

– Willow Pearson

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Not a lot to report just yet – except next month's gig at Arcosanti, the oasis of visionary architecture just north of Phoenix – but big things (new music, science fiction, essays, coloring book pages, and more) on the way.  For now, here is some bite-sized news.  It is my honor to do my part in the Great Work of using art to make this world a better place.  

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

love,

Michael

New Paintings

"Queen of Swords"

24"x48" – oil, acrylic, and aerosol paint on masonite

Prints & Notes About This Painting Here

"Velociraptor & Embellishments"

2017 – acrylic and oil paint on two 18"x9" canvases

Original Available – Info Here

Magenta Ceiba on Future Fossils Podcast

iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | Patreon

This week’s guest is master community builder, singer, and human spirit animal Magenta Ceiba of the Bloom Network.  We discuss a sweeping suite of topics, such as the adoption of regenerative culture practices, cultivating planetwide resiliency, communicating across HUGE political gaps, and the perennial question:  "How can we be good ancestors?"

Upcoming Appearances

2 November – Austin, TX – Vortex Repository Theater
Original Music & Sound Design for P3M5: Plurality of Privacy Project in 5-Minute Plays

3 November – Austin, TX – Guan Yin Tea House
Cyberacoustic Guitar Instrumental Tea Set

10 - 11 November – Mayer, AZ – Arcosanti Convergence
Cyberacoustic Guitar + Live Painting

You Might Have Missed