Category Archives: Art of eVan

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A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

I posted version 14 of this series back in October 2013 as you may remember. I’d created this version before version 14 obviously, but I decided back then to post version fourteen instead of version 12.

This particular version has more of a holiday feel to it, and it seems to express some characteristics of gold. Sometimes the drawings I make in pen or pencil end up looking like they have characteristics of gold when I manipulate them digitally.

While the original drawing is completely different in color scheme, the structure is the same. The original drawing actually only has one of the four smaller circles surrounding the main circular design in the middle.

When I started manipulating the original image on the computer, I wanted to explore and experiment with how it might look if I copied and pasted the smaller circular designs provided in the original drawing.

These series look like they could be sort of religious, like they might be architectural designs for Byzantine churches from the early Christian empire, but I wasn’t really trying to emphasize a religious message with this image. I just want people to enjoy looking at the mandelic designs I sometimes make.

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December 16, 2013 · 7:41 am
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What’s War Got To Do With It? (version 8)

What's War Got To Do With It? (version 8)

While I just created this particular version of this drawing, the original was made back in 2008. It’s from a drawing done with graphite on paper. I scanned it into the computer back then, and made a few manipulations.

The title “What’s War Got To Do With It?” was inspired by a song Tina Turner made called What’s Love Got To Do With It? I wasn’t very geopolitically literate, even in 2008, so I really couldn’t express myself in words as to what goes on in geopolitical affairs, such as war for example.

The strokes and hatch-marks look like they are composed of gold. While gold has been a currency to park wealth at in history, it is not presently. In fact, the gold standard was un-hinged from the dollar in 1971 by president Nixon.

The centralized wealth of a nation and the geopolitical forces of war and defense are inextricably interrelated. I believe that the emotion of love is also permeated throughout global affairs as well. That’s why I made the title as it is for this series.

The year 2014 is right around the corner, and a few economic forecasters, such as Martin Armstrong, are blogging in their blogs that we are looking at the beginnings of war expressed as civil unrest, and revolution for the next year, and to last, at least, until 2016.

Some examples of what we are looking at here in America are already being expressed in European countries such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal. They are having such incredible problems with their failed currency–the Euro–that their unemployment rates are at 60% and more.

The Euro and the dollar are very dependent on each other, so when Europe really pinwheels at full speed in its economic downward spiral, this major catastrophe will ripple over to America. The dollar is by no means a stable currency, though it is presently the world’s main currency. This is not going to be a mainstay however. China’s currency has passed the value of the Euro in the market.

In a sense, this picture sort of symbolically answers the question for people What’s War Got To Do With It? Well, international economic failure has a lot to do with it, if not everything, since economies run on things such as confidence, love, marriage, generosity, peace, and so forth.

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December 16, 2013 · 6:20 am
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Concomitant Comets (version 4)

Concomitant Comets (version 4)

I uploaded the first series of this image several months ago, and it had a bunch of text I incorporated in that previous version that I had obtained from tweets I tweeted out at the time on Twitter. Well, I became annoyed with the text after a while, and really wanted to have this image portrayed without the text detracting so much attention from the image itself.

I decided to attempt to obnubilate the text by using various methods learned from earlier digital art training. You can still see some of the text a little bit, but that’s okay with me. It 1) creates a sort of subliminal effect and 2) allows for more ease on the eye enabling it to explore the textures of color and shape.

The word concomitant really means something that accompanies another thing. Like when a patient takes a certain medicine for a certain illness, sometimes another drug will be prescribed along with the primary drug for treatment. This is termed as taking a drug concomitantly with another drug.

In this picture, I determined that the circular shapes with tails on them looked like comets, and there are several of them, so I titled it Concomitant Comets. It is odd, however, that the comets are arising from what appears to me to be an ocean. Perhaps they are U.S.O.s (unidentified submersible objects) springing forth from a secret alien facility deeply submerged under an unnoteworthy part of the deep ocean far from land so as to remain surreptitious to the sea voyaging human mind.

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December 2, 2013 · 9:05 am
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The Coincide-Dance (version 2)

The Coincide-Dance (version 2)

The idea I was attempting to express on a first try with some markers here was the idea of so-called solid objects passing through different mediums, such as water, or air. The supposedly non-solid mediums are drawn in rectangular, cuboidal, and triangular objects and planes.

I was also trying to express an artistically expressed dimension of Plato’s idea of “shadows on a cave wall.” Some 20th century physicists sometimes compared the third dimension of reality as a sort of shadow of the fourth, which is time. Time is described as a continuum, and when it’s viewed as a sort of separate state from one’s self after participating in it, it can be seen as a sort of medium, or state, or condition.

I was also attempting to express another abstract way of depicting flesh and bones. Bones are solid, and flesh is more malleable. Objects passing through different mediums in time are like the bones, and their surroundings are like the flesh. This supports the notion that we are really not separate beings from our environments, but our environments are really extensions of ourselves.

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December 2, 2013 · 7:40 am
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The Motherboard of Many Reflections (version 3)

The Motherboard of Many Reflections (version 3)

I first thought of titling this one The Board of Many Reflections, but then at the last moment I saw the wit in titling it The Motherboard of Many Reflections.

The physical source from which this piece is derived was painted on wood with assemblages attached to it. I flipped around the word “many” you see in it several times in order to play some tricks with the eye.

Other than that, I don’t really have much more to say about this piece. I got quite involved in digitally reconstructing the source pieces composing it however.

I just feel that it’s like a sort of chess-board, yet, because it has been hybridized into an electronic manifestation, it had to take the route of being a motherboard. Mothers are the sources from which everyone springs in physical life during and after birth, so it has references to the female powers for which much of life is played upon.

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November 30, 2013 · 8:41 am
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Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version D1

AfterTheCrashD1ematted2

While I had the time, I thought I’d begin the D series for this near-future oriented retrospective on the current state of humanity. I already uploaded the first image for the C series, and I plan on making a variety of variations and sub-series within it, as well as the same for the D series.

The star shape in the upper left corner of the picture is actually a piece of cardboard in a star-shape. I pasted it to a rectangular piece of cardboard for a base. Of course I primed everything, and then I sanded down some of the rough spots. I had to do that because I’d also pasted some paper tissues to the surface in order to give the plane some more texture to work with when I added all the other media on top of it.

As you can see, I pasted pieces of cut-outs from magazines, as well as from print-outs, on to the surface. These features have a sort of window-like character to them. If the picture were animated, it would look like there are many different activities going on behind a foreground of pastel and marker media.

With this work, I was able to successfully integrate some more three dimensional qualities, as the simple house-like shapes over off to the right of the picture make it look like the viewer is looking down at a neighborhood.

I drew in some keyboard characters on the picture because I really like the shapes of letters and characters. So many things that are commonly used for utilitarian purposes attract my attention. I feel like they have other aesthetic qualities to them that people most often ignore. Not only that, but utilitarian tools and objects can be combined into seemingly nonsensical combinations and aggregations.

A lot of my Wrecked Tangles ideas look like they are what a visual trip through a subconscious mind and its digestive activity after consuming data and information surrounding it in various environments. Much of our culture is pure advertisement, and commercialism, so I’m giving some visual perspective on what your subconscious mind does in breaking apart and assimilating everything into something manageable to yourself.

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November 29, 2013 · 8:24 am
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After the Crash (version C1)

After the Crash (version C1)

I’ve been working on finishing up this piece for the last couple of days. A previous phase of this mixed media creation is actually a part of Future Bell-Tops, a digital media piece that’s in the Traditional and Electronic Hybrid album.

I didn’t know what the heck to do with this recently unfinished piece. It had just been hanging around collecting dust for like almost a year now. I was undecided as to what category of creation I’ve already standardized for some of my creative outlets, i.e., the Micro-Chimerisms, the Paranormal Portrait Project, or the Wrecked Tangles project.

It was much closer to the Wrecked Tangles ideas, so I decided to make it the next series for the After the Crash continuation of the Wrecked Tangles project.

I realize all this weaving through the paths of my imagination and creativity can be confusing, but I actually find it fascinating and fun to explore. I hope you can share my excitement.

This piece has nails, a mesh of poultry wire, auto mechanic rags, wood, a small computer card, pastel, acrylic paint, oil paint, and cut-outs of print outs and pictures from old books incorporated into it. It truly is a work of mixed media. And on top of that, this piece has now been hybridized since it’s now scanned for usage in digital manipulations.

I don’t have any specific meanings, or ideas tied to this image. It’s more of just an expression to everyone of how different, and seemingly unrelated materials can be combined into works of art, allowing all the atomic particles and molecules composing it to express themselves through an unexpected artistic venture.

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November 23, 2013 · 9:10 am
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The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

I made this image back in June, 2013. It started out with using magic marker on paper. There was some bleed through from some rubbing alcohol I applied to drawings on previous pages. I incorporated the designs into the stains.

What you see here is a digital manipulation of the original drawing. It’s basically the drawing times four. I use mirroring techniques to accomplish what you see here, as well as in other images.

I realized that the process that I take in many of my creations is the process of unfoldment. Unfoldment is different than development in the sense that unfolding is organic, and flower like, whereas development is more machine like, and each machine developed can’t develop more without a designer making a new model.

Unfoldment is a process that takes place from within a living organism or being. So growth, life, and will come from within a living being, not a “lifeless” machine.

I titled this piece The Feather Swept Sky. I imagined all the feathers of birds sweeping the skies of earth and magically sweeping away all the pollution. This image reminds me of some Native American art and jewelry. It also reminds me of ancient Egyptian art work and jewelry.

I suppose it’s a religious and mystical image bringing us all back a reminder of ancient religions, tribes, and civilizations. It’s the wisdom from our past, and the magical beliefs people had. Especially the belief of respecting and honoring the earth as a living, breathing being, not a dead rock to be used up by the never-ending greed of one percent moguls.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:38 am
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Yellow Tide (version 1)

Yellow Tide (version 1)

It looks like a lot of people liked Purple Tide, the last image I uploaded here last night. Well, this is Yellow Tide. It’s actually the predecessor to Purple Tide. It’s the same design, but the colors are inverted.

To be sure, this is part of a drawing I created with mixed media on paper, including magic marker and rubbing alcohol. Thinking of rubbing alcohol gives one a cool feeling, as this is how it feels when you rub it on your skin.

I used to live in southern California, and would visit the beaches there on the West coast every once in a while. The colors in Yellow tide remind me some of the memories I have of going to New Port, Dana Point, San Clemente, or Laguna.

Yet, this image is abstract enough to merely suggest a beach scene. In fact, if you get a totally different impression, then, by all means, let yourself explore that line of thought into your own imagination, and use this image as a doorway to help you get there.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:32 am
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Purple Tide (version 1)

Purple Tide (version 1)

This image here is a fragment chosen from Ploidy the Diploid, which is another image in this album. As I often do when I get a chance, I pull out previous works I’ve done and see new things in them that intuitively look like they could be independent art works in themselves.

Creation has a tendency to morph and grow out of what came before, even when it seems completely unrelated. The subconscious mind is a lot less discriminative, and categorical in the sense of conscious classification systems. In fact, chief editors of newspapers and magazines know that the positioning of supposedly unrelated ads actually contribute to an article you may be reading. It actually gets digested in your subconscious mind as one interrelated kilobyte of information.

So this image here looks to me like an ocean wave under a purple and red sky. My fascination with alien planets makes me think of an ocean somewhere else in the universe. Though it is independent of earth, the properties of this imaginary place are connected and related in the sense of liquid, and high & low tides.

It’s just a very liquid picture composed of relatively basic abstract shapes, another one of my approaches to creation. That’s the thing, I really like to embroil my audience with intricacies and complexities in my art, but I try to point out the basic and simple shapes that are used to construct such elaborate labyrinths.

It’s the idea of perfection versus imperfection, and all of the intuitive visual equations that I subconsciously work out in the water of my mind.

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November 20, 2013 · 7:37 am