New Paintings + Light & Shadow: Unplugged Across America

"The nature of infinity is this: That everything has its own vortex, and when once a traveler through Eternity has pass'd that Vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind his path, into a globe itself unfolding like a sun..."
- William Blake

• Light & Shadow: Unplugged Across America

My six-week, thirty city tour with journalist and film-maker Charles Shaw is well underway (full program & itinerary here)...and with all the time we're spending on America's scenic highways, I've decided to take some moments out to record a series of spontaneous unplugged music videos at a few of the most beautiful places we encounter. Here's the first in an ongoing series, delivered as-live-as-possible to all of you wondrous people at home:

(Be sure to watch it in HD – lyrics, info, & embed code are all on the video page)

You'll be able to download the music for all of these videos free here:
http://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/light-shadow

Want to spend more time exploring our beautiful travails? Check out my regularly-updated tour photo gallery and enjoy how I've abused the macro mode on my new tour camera!

Our next dates are in Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Invite your friends – it's going to be a profound few evenings of conversation and live music!

• New Paintings

Chandelier

2010 09 17 & 18 Granada & Mike's Westsider

(Sub Swara, Quixotic, Sagiquintarius, Mindzeye)

24"x30" - paint markers on masonite

email me for $25 11"x17" prints or to inquire about the original

Zoom in by clicking on the image, and you'll see the myriad tiny rainbows that glisten all over this piece...a further development of my attempts to render crystalline and glassy transparent forms with the limited medium of paint markers. Plenty of glossy goodness, but I made a minor mistake in perspective (email me if you can find it and I'll give you an electronic high-five). This painting is dedicated to my dear friends Tommy and Ruth Carter, at whose going away party (commemorating their move from Kansas City to live with me in Boulder) this was completed.

Temple Burn

2010 09 24 Hodi's Half Note

(Random Rab, D.V.S*, Untied Laces)

18"x24" - paint markers on masonite

email me for $25 11"x17" prints or to inquire about the original

When I got back from Burning Man Festival this year, Boulder's typically bold mountain skyline was shrouded by smoke from a huge forest fire. The Four Mile Canyon fire destroyed over 169 homes, including the new home of my friend Josh Davis and his pregnant star goddess. This was painted at a benefit concert for victims of the fire...I asked another friend of mine what symbol most well-represented the healing potential of this disaster, and she responded, "Don't some pine cones have to burn in order to release their seeds?" Yes, they do. And just like the memorializing Temple Burn every year at Black Rock City, the Four Mile Canyon fire was a sacrament offered up to serve the vision of a new life.

Juliana's Jaguar

2010 08, 09 Rootwire Festival & Studio

16"x20" - paint markers on masonite

email me for $25 11"x17" prints

This portrait of the Water Lily Jaguar is dedicated to my underworld-journeying friend Juliana Willars for her ongoing dedication to reconnaissance on the Other Side...as always with commissioned work I'm glad to have been challenged by the unusual subject, although giving my own touch to the traditional Mayan iconography was surprisingly difficult.

(You can check out some of my other contract pieces here...)

• Press

In related news (insofar as I have made it my career to educate people about their embeddedness in a living intelligence utterly beyond the scale of human drama)...

The lecture I posted last week, "Self As City, City As Self," was transcribed by a gracious friend and is now up online for reading at Reality Sandwich, an excellent change-focused community news site.

The lecture also got a shoutout in TheCoolTV's recent article, "Could Festivals Pave The Way To A More Advanced Society?" (My answer is, of course, "Yes!") And the soundtrack was just reviewed by the Denver Westword's Cory Casciato, who seems unusually susceptible to my music's psychedelic influence...

More new music, art, and assorted multimedia inspiration soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading and have a beautiful week!

New Paintings With New Pens

available - 2009 01 17 - Jackpot Saloon (Breakbeat Buddha, Johnny C, DJ Clandestine)

A milestone in both the "redshift" and "blueshift senses: my last gig in Lawrence, and my first gig using the new ultra-fat-tipped "Hardcore" brand markers I bought to mix it up a little. Working with only one width kept me from throwing broad swaths or solid patches of color on the paintings, which led to a lot of tiny, clustered, focused work; the idea was to start with a few bold strokes and then use the finer lines to bring out detail. You know, some kind of actual painting technique! But those big pens with their wide flat tips were more difficult to wield than I had anticipated. It takes A LOT more work to an even line - kind of like being a kid playing with your parents' calligraphy set (if that metaphor connects at all with anyone!). Those fat ribbons ended up a little more wiggly than I had meant to make them... I like how the fat yellow pen is kind of transparent and you can see the ribbons a little bit through the orbs. Keeping everything overlapping in the right order was the biggest challenge of this piece, but I think overall the depth is fairly convincing.

available - 2009 01 26 Hodi's Half Note (Vibesquad, Bass Science, Savoy)

This is what happens when I drive for eight hours and THEN paint, only to try and finish it at 5 AM after the concert, when my brain is wondering why I'm keeping it awake. Exhaustion aside, I got to try out a lot of cool new things with this piece - like making transparent orbs out of concentric circles, and giving scaly leaves to the bold wide strokes of green I laid down first. Another experiment with this one - and something I'm going to have to try again a few times, because the idea is so satisfying - was to create a minor explosion of light IN THE MIDDLE of the object, BETWEEN the tentacles or whatever they are, as if the roots of the thing are ripping open and illuminating everything from the opening rift. The electric blue margin on that foreground tentacle really pleases me, but it wouldn't have looked as if I had extended it anywhere else. Kind of like part of another painting busting into this one.

available - 2009 01 28 The Root (Pnuma Live PA, Lazer Sword, Eskmo, Welder)

The transparent plants were a first. And this one is another attempt to leave more and more of the painting "unfinished" as it goes from one side to the other, to reveal little glimpses of the process. This one didn't leave MUCH unfinished - just a little at the top. I also tried creating a "scalloped" boundary along the outside of the bubbles, giving them a bit more of a liquid look to them, by outlining them with one wavy line and then again by normal curves that partly occluded the waves. You can see some of the original wavy bubbles up toward the top. Looking at it now, it seems like those plants are trying to grab the bubbles as they float by but keep missing. Or maybe that's just how I felt at The Root while painting this. It was a weird night - not many people there, given the talent, and SO cold, even indoors.