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,

3 New Paintings + 8 Yoga Mats + 7 Awesome Conversations

Thank you for opening this!  Art is a way for me to organize my life to best receive my deep intelligence and guidance and then share it with the world...so this dumb little newsletter that I've been keeping since 2009 is like an altar where I place my prayers for world peace and the ongoing evolution of our loving cosmos.  As Alex Grey adapted from the Mahayana Buddhists, "May the merit generated by this act benefit all sentient beings."

You know where to find me if you'd like to pass a message through the grate.

love

Michael

PS – I'm opening for Random Rab in Austin on March 30th.  Hope you can make it!

New Paintings

(I now offer discounts or free prints, as well as extensive backstories for every new painting, to Patreon supporters.  Here's the link if you'd like to learn more.)

"Dying To Know"

collaboration with Elliot Rogers & William Allan Ross

2017 • 36"x48" • acrylic paint on gallery-wrapped canvas

original painting & fine art reproductions here

"Going Home"

2018 • 24"x36" • acrylic paint on gallery-wrapped canvas

painted live at Gem & Jam Festival 2018 (Tucson, AZ)

to the music of Earthcry (onstage), Emancipator, Big Wild, & STS9 (2x)

original painting & fine art reproductions here

"Rainbow Worm"

2017 • 20"x20" • acrylic and oil paint on canvas

original painting & fine art reproductions here

New Conversations

At last week's Body Hacking Conference, I joined somatic therapist Saj Razvi for a group discussion on MDMA-assisted and psychedelic psychotherapies, drawing on his successful clinical work with MAPS and the FDA to reschedule MDMA as a legal treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  We had an awesome chat about the protocols used in this study, the miraculous successes that they've seen with this new mode of healing, and why it is time for our society to make these medicines available to all of us.  Read more and download the audio recording here.

For fellow nerds:  I've posted THREE new conversations about Blade Runner 2049 and the future of humanity with acclaimed film scholars John David Ebert, Barry Vacker, and JF Martel.  These will eventually be made available to everyone as Future Fossils Podcast episodes, but for now you can find them all on Patreon for $5.  

We go deep on ancient myths and symbolism in the films, on whether love can make an android "real," on whether this film helps or hurts our cultural imagination of the future, and a lot more.  It has been an honor to sit down with these three thinkers and I know that any sci-fi fan will dig these...

One of my favorite comedians, Shane Mauss, explains how we went so deep with psychedelics that he had to check himself into a mental ward.  We talk about time travel, God discovering humanity,  and more.  One of the funniest and weirdest episodes of Future Fossils yet!

My old friend and badass truth warrior gonzo journalist Charles Shaw maps out the trauma engine that is modern civilization – and why it's so important that we fight for the right to heal ourselves.

This is the first of THREE HOURS of the show with Charles – if you would like to hear the rest of it before it's published, it's available to Patreon supporters at all levels here.

Easily in the top five sharpest people I have ever met, my graduate advisor and meta-disciplinary wizard Sean Esbjörn-Hargens talks about how to train multiple perspectives on the natural world as well as economics and the development of human organizations.  If that sounds dry, prepare to be surprised by one of the most psychoactive knowledge paradigms you've ever met...

New Yoga Mats & More

I finally have yoga mats for eight of my paintings (one of which is not shown here), with more to come soon!  This is now the cheapest way to get high-quality, large reproductions of my work – larger and less costly than the giclée canvas prints – good enough to hang on walls but durable enough to take whatever you can throw at them while kicking ass in yoga class.

Grab yours here.  I make a rather small percentage of each sale but I'm just glad to have my art available like this.  If you get one, please send me pictures of you rocking out with your new mat and I'll respond with something small and special for you...!

This will be the new destination for all of my digital art merchandise.  More soon, but now there are already tons of items up for my most popular designs, on items you cannot get anywhere else.

I have more than 16 hours of my music available for your enjoyment up on Spotify...and nearly five times as much music, spanning more than ten years' of recordings, up on Bandcamp.  It's all available for anything you care to spare, because my music is a gift and I would like for it to stay that way.  

(You can, of course, subscribe:  Bandcamp subscribers also get all of the audio that I release in any format you desire, including many many private press releases, and some heavy discounts on my paper prints, and public cred for being part of my small crew of badass fans.)

Select Upcoming Events

Here are some of the things I'm most excited about this spring.  For my full schedule, visit my webpage – and if you want me in your neighborhood this year, give me a shout!

“True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible… In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives.

– Wendell Berry

Three New Album Covers, New Time-Lapse, & Meeting The Self You Aren't

"To understand ourselves, we must embrace the alien."

- PZ Meyers, octopus neuroscientist

..:: New Time-Lapse & Talks ::..

Last fall, journalist Charles Shaw and I embarked on The Light & Shadow Tour, a six-week, thirty-city journey across the United States that combined music, speaking, and documentary film-making into a profound voyage not only through the terrain of American culture but also into the depths of our nation's conflicted psyche.

A big part of it was gathering interviews for his amazing documentary Exile Nation, which is just about as thorough and moving a view into the issue of justice and prisons in the U.S. as I have ever encountered. But we also had a unique opportunity to speak with audiences all over the map about the role of "the shadow" – the repressed voices not only in our culture, but also in our individual minds:

The shadow is the part of ourselves so profoundly disowned that it shows up not as a quality of the self, but a trait of other people – not a choice that we are making, but a fate that imposes itself upon us. And to whatever degree we continue to refuse acknowledgment of our shadows, we remain the desperate victims of life instead of its joyous collaborators.

It isn't easy to write a new story of the self - and to constantly re-write that story, when new truths come to us in the form of disarming companions, rude awakenings, and other surprises. But it is the work set out before us, if we are to live as whole people and give the most of ourselves to the birthing of a new and better world.

Meeting The Self You Aren't is a free compilation of clips from my talks on that tour, a pastiche lecture on the stories we exclude from our own. I used excerpts to narrate this latest time-lapse live painting video for "Stun Flower" (which is, incidentally, also a music video for the title track from my latest cyber-acoustic guitar LP The Body Electric, and a kind of tutorial for anyone interested in how to draw near-perfect Golden Spirals freehand):

Watch this in HD on Youtube / Vimeo

..:: Album Art ::..

I've been heavy on the album art recently...

Meeting The Self You Aren't features another example of the new hybrid freehand/digital style I'm working out – a tunnel into the unmapped I:

Michael Garfield - Meeting The Self You Aren't (2011)

But I've also had the delight of making album art for other people for the first time. Here's a link to Freddy Todd's new mix for Grassroots California, for which I modified my painting "Tunnel To The Moon" with the awesome digital kaleidoscope software Repper:

Freddy Todd - Neon Kaleidoscope Mix (2011)

As much fun as I had with those two covers, I'm proudest of my art for my friend Jay Jaramillo (aka ProJect Aspect)'s debut full-length LP, Put This World On Hold. This album doesn't officially drop for a couple of weeks, but in the meantime I encourage you to click through and get down to his other tracks. He and Freddy are two of the hottest rising star DJs on the scene right now and it's my honor to call them my peeps.

Jay's concept was of a planet of puzzle pieces caught midway through explosion:

ProJect Aspect – Put This World On Hold (2011)

Each of these images is available (with or without the type) as a signed, glossy 11"x17" poster print for $25 each, or $35 for two (shipping included – just email me and I can have prints to you within a week!).

..:: Music4Change Interview ::..

Last year I was interviewed by Music4Change, a Fort Collins event production company throwing shows to make a difference. They don't archive their interviews online, and they had mine up for such a flash that I even missed it...so here is the full text of our conversation, in which I discuss getting into the live painting scene, the myth and science of creativity, and the purpose of art as I understand it. It's held up pretty well over the last year:

After some time I came to really understand how important inspiration is to the well-being of a person or a culture. We NEED to be reminded of our place in a bigger context, a broader myth, a grander story in the same way we NEED to eat and sleep and breathe. Meaning is essential to human existence and in fact the search for meaning pretty much characterizes human nature, so artists are indispensable. Eventually, the guilt of “not contributing” as an artist and musician like my friend the chef or my friend the construction worker evaporated. I found my worth, and it’s intimately tied to helping other people find theirs, in age of fear-mongering media and alienating social infrastructure.

..:: Next Newsletter ::..

• video from my concert with Andy Skellenger in Crestone, Colorado;

• a new live painting from my shows with Fareed Haque's Math Games & That 1 Guy;

• another installment of my essay series, Ode To A Paradigm Shift;

• and more I haven't dreamed up yet.

Thanks for your time and have a wonderful day!

Four New Paintings From An Artist-At-Large... Also, Shredding

• Four Live Paintings From Art Outside Festival & Bear Creek Festival

Juggernaut Paisley

2010 10 22 The Parish, 10 23 Art Outside Festival,

11 11 Bear Creek Festival

(Big Gigantic, Alex B, Govinda, Anahata Sound, Ricochet, Toubab Krewe, Alex B, Rebirth Brass Band, Umphrey's McGee)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

original for sale - check asking price / email me

11"x17" prints for sale* - email me

Dedicated to journalist and filmmaker Charles Shaw – who, after we struggled through the first three weeks of our Light & Shadow Tour, finally saw me in my element the night I started this painting in Austin. (Not that I don't love playing concerts to empty churches...seriously, I do.) It ain't easy to share the front seat with someone for six freaking weeks, but eventually, our buddy-cop-movie caricature grew into an assuredly lifelong friendship. Intense art-and-activism road trips come highly recommended, if you're looking for your own forty days in the desert.

Together & All Over The Place

2010 11 11, 12 Bear Creek Music Festival

(Umphrey's McGee, Garaj Mahal)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

original for sale - check asking price / email me

11"x17" prints for sale* - email me

Dedicated to Fareed Haque, guitarist of Garaj Mahal, with whom I had an excellent conversation while waiting in the dinner line later that night. Fareed's only moonlights as a rockstar; he's a professor of both jazz and classical guitar most of the time, and recently contributed to a book on the neuroscience of guitar. Needless to say, he has a refreshingly unique perspective on the intersections of music, psychology, and biology, and I hope that we're able to continue the conversation in public at some point...

These Things Happen...

2010 11 12 Bear Creek Music Festival

(Eliot Lipp, Everyone Orchestra, Chali 2na, Umphrey's McGee)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

original for sale - check asking price / email me

11"x17" prints for sale* - email me

The second mass extinction on an Earth-like planet three stars away, happening right now. Points to anyone who can identify the film from which I pulled the title for this piece. (Hint: The line is in reference to a different extremely rare and disruptive weather phenomenon...)

Dedicated to biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge for their theory of "punctuated equilibrium," which argued that life maintains a kind of business-as-usual stability most of the time, then rockets through periods of rapid and radical transformation...not exclusively gradual or catastrophic. The fractal landscape of evolutionary change, vast and inexplicable.

Chihuly Oyster

2010 11 13 Bear Creek Music Festival

(Dubconscious, DJ Logic, Eliot Lipp, The New Deal, Bonobo)

24"x36" - paint markers on canvas panel

original for sale - check asking price / email me

11"x17" prints for sale* - email me

Keith Haring went on a date with H.R. Giger...

Dedicated to all of the other live painters at Bear Creek, alongside whom I busted my butt all weekend – and to Carrie Curtis and Chris O'Toole, who were hilariously (at least to me) each charged with the responsibility of coordinating the visual arts there. (What kind of festival hires competing art coordinators??) We had multiple visual artists working the main stage for the entire five-day event, and a real family vibe started growing on me by the end of it. I'm already excited about next year, and want to thank everyone involved for making it happen!

• Bear Creek Festival Gallery & MG/Odenedo Collab

Costumes, collaborations, body painting, and over a dozen live artists...this festival was a treat for the eyes. Check it out:

Bear Creek Festival pics at Facebook

Each stage at Bear Creek had large wooden placards with the band names painted on them. It was arranged that we live painters could go to town on them, ultimately auctioning them off to support the festival's greening program...so admirable artist Kevin Odenedo and I finally went to it on our first, long-awaited collaboration:

2010 11 13 Bear Creek Music Festival

(The New Mastersounds)
collaboration with Kevin Odenedo

24"x48" - paint markers & acrylic on laminate board

I doodled on numerous band placards over the weekend, but this is the only one that ended up looking even slightly coherent. (Having such a plenitude of live painters was kind of a traffic jam, but it was still a blast.)

• "Autocatalysis" Music Video From The Light & Shadow Tour

And lastly, here's a new video for an old (2005) solo acoustic guitar tapping etude from my first studio album, Get Used To Being Everything. I already have one video of this, but I wanted another that didn't have me yammering on about evolution before I start playing (although this take is somewhat slower than that one). Plus, the forests of North Carolina were too beautiful not to film something there. Enjoy...more for you next week!

Watch it in full HD / Download the track for free

* 11"x17" UV glossy poster prints (shipping included):

1/$25, 2/$40, 3/$50, 4/$60