Category Archives: Art of eVan

Note the pinpoints of organized light, like they are coming from the windows of a skyscraper working at night. Like there’s a story of workaholics to be told here. They were formed by a flooding technique I used that’s provided for users to use in Photoshop. Overlapping text can be determined—however inchoately—as composing the vertical and horizontal structures. It can’t be determined, however, whether if the larger text arising from the bottom to the middle of the picture is implying “services” or “devices.” In a larger, holistic context, devices perform services, so there is indeed some meaningful overlap there.

Usually I make and show images with a lot of color in them. This piece doesn’t meet that standard, so it is sort of an odd one for me. It still expresses a style I’d imagined and been inspired by. It achieves an apparently complicated and random background—sort of like white noise—but makes gestures towards order and implications towards meaning. It’s like a subconscious stew or alphabet soup. Perhaps I may develop some ideas playing with the shapes of letters and transforming them into aberrations of traditional letters as found in the English alphabet.

After reviewing this piece and preparing it for my online galleries, I am reminded of Maria Elena Vieira Da Silva’s art, and how it inspires me. I find this piece to be very similar to some of the paintings she produced. I’m not ashamed of that either. Usually I strive to be as original and independent as I can from other artists, but, with this piece, I feel it’s a model that only resembles Da Silva’s; and it acts as a stepping stone for me for inspirations of newer and even more original work.

I find this illustration to be rather top heavy due to the concentration of white points collected at the very top of the image. This vaguely annoyed me, and I wanted to add some space above that concentration. After looking at it for a few more moments, I decided to leave the canvas shape and size as it is. I find it to be an asymmetrical balance that creates tension, but not enough to be obnoxious. Moreover, I selected a rectangular shape in the lower left side of the picture plane, and darkened it slightly so that it differentiates to a slight darker shade from the rest of the dark grey background. It could be the silhouette or shadow of a building in the foreground in one’s imagination.

In putting this image together, I saw light casting out from a mechanical device. I thought of film, as in film for a traditional 20th century camera, and how it chemically forms images on its surface after being exposed to light. Then I thought of the primitive ritual art that cavemen made in prehistoric times on cave walls. I combined these thoughts in the title Cave Camera. 

I wanted to combine a futuristic robotic or computerized device with the idea of a caveman painting something on a cave wall along with light cast upon it so that the image can be seen with added special effects. Simultaneously, in a more contemporary time period, I see associations with a movie director and how movie directors set up movements in time to be filmed. Images capture moments in time, whether if they are more subjective, as in a painting, or more objective, as in a photograph. Movies capture movements in time, such as with films and videos. Movies used to be created by image frame stills in the 20th century. Many stills were linked together so that, when they quickly passed over a source of light, the images cast upon a wall or silver screen gave the illusion of movement. This surely would have been a magical experience for a caveman. 

I was inspired by some of these ideas by reading The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin, and Meditations on a Hobby Horse, by Ernst Gombrich. It seems like we are entering a dark age here in the Western world, so I have ideas now that reach back to the origins of art and why people made art in prehistoric times. I realize pretty much everything time related is cyclical, so, if we do end up collapsing our civilization all the way down to a dark age, it will only be temporary; temporary in a larger sense of time that is.

This image comes from three different sources of my art that I’ve blogged about before. One of which I’ve blogged about already—Astonished Buoyancy. Another image I blogged about here, Archimedes’ Light, is part of a larger drawing I made called Tree Fish, which is amalgamated into this illustration. A part of New York Station is also incorporated into this piece. My goal is to explore the varying degrees of approximation the different layers and sources have with one another as I form new images. They sometimes merge well as if they were all from the same source, and other times I can tell that its been put together. Either one of these perceptions is okay with me because I work with the new image enough to usually satisfy my visual field and sense of composition. 

In Meditations on a Hobby Horse, Ernst Gombrich discusses the idea of replacement, substitution, and surrogation. A hobby horse is meant as a substitution for a real live horse so that a kid can enjoy imagining riding a horse as he or she rocks back and forth on it. While this is an outdated idea today because kids don’t ride hobby horses in this day and age, it still represents the idea of substitution in art. In history, art has been a vehicle for representations of reality as people perceive it. More recently, art became a vehicle for representing an artist’s inner world and how he or she expresses it for the masses to represent a collective inner reality. That’s where I am at in my artistic endeavors. 

The layers of previous works that I’ve made introduced into new images and combinations are concepts I use to build in my imagination. These concepts are usually found in objects, people, places, or ideas. My art becomes a subtle substitution for a multiplicity of things. I aim to create eye food for you. Something to help you organize your mind. 

Specifications:

Title: Cave Camera (version 1)

Source mediums: Water-based ink, and ball-point pen, on paper, digitally combined

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)

Digital manipulation completed: 9/3/2017

Dimensions of print: 32 inches by 28 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $90.00

Investment of print framed with glass: $430.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

I made the foundation for this image back in June, 2017. It’s a selection from the piece I posted and blogged about then titled Supplant. I titled this selection June Joinder. Three lines are joining a circular fiducial marker structure in the center lower left. They look like they could be composed of metal. They also make me think of some alien technology doing measurements on some earthly plant life as they scan a selection of organic matter.

Anyway, I had fun introducing a drawing I’d done earlier this summer with marker and ball-point pen on a manilla folder into a background of organic plant matter. The plant matter is just weeds I gathered from the backyard and scanned into digital documents. It’s the idea of every little detail being observed by an adjoined point of sense.

I’m noticing I’m taking a path opposite of the trending pop art craze. I read an article recently showing that people are looking at contemporary art in museums and galleries a lot more currently than they are looking at the more classical art movements. Even impressionism and post-impressionism are being ignored more by the younger generations.

Compared to the more classical art styles and movements, contemporary art is generally more simple in content, detail, and composition. Pop art is, of course, a great representative of contemporary art. I see pop art everywhere I look in current culture and society. I know what purpose pop art serves. It doesn’t require people to think, contemplate, and discover. It’s all just surface.

I just know from my own experience that anything my mind has to work at to understand frequently discourages doing so. There’s always so many more things my mind can consume that are easier to understand. A new word I don’t know, while I’m reading something, can often trip me up and discourage me from reading further. I surmise that this is generally the case with others.

But now that “the world” is a handheld device, it’s so easy to look a word up. And I often do so. I just gave that example in the above paragraph to describe a common challenge we all experience as mortals with limited abilities and resources. I think our current educational system and fast-paced world discourage noticing subtle nuances and details in our surroundings because so much information usually doesn’t serve someone else’s purpose.

So with my art, I put a lot of detail and nuance back into the picture plane. I want to encourage sensitivity to things usually ignored. I like how, over time, nature and natural forces overcome manmade things—including pop art. Pop art can be found in amusement parks and carnivals. I like imagining visiting an abandoned amusement park in the future that has been overtaken, to an artistic degree, by natural entropic forces.

Many pop artists like the mockery and worship pop art makes of itself. They seem to enjoy the irony of it, while profiting off the cultures of dumbshits educated to ignore vast experiences of nuanced perceptions. I like the impersonal mockery time and nature make of securely established elite pop artists and their pop art.

Specifications:

Title: June Joinder (version 4)

Source mediums: Ball-point pen on manilla folder digitally combined with digitally scanned organic plant matter

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)

Digital manipulation completed: 8/10/2017

Dimensions of print: 30 inches by 25 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $85.00

Investment of print framed: $425.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

I titled this one Vortical Vertex because the “eye” of the vortex formation in this depiction is in the top portion of this illustration. Vortex means a swirling formation, such as a galaxy. Vertex means the highest point, or the top of an apex. The sources used to create this amalgamation come from Wendy’s Sandy Waves (the lower left portion), and Topology of Hearts, Hands, and Minds.

I was drawn to the colors and shapes I saw in this area of Wendy the Mermaid’s portrait on the beach. I also like the static noise results seen in the background and the lower half of the picture. They resulted from manipulations and filters I adjusted in Photoshop.

I can visualize this piece hanging in a nice hotel or bank near a desk by a tall potted plant. It feels like it could be part of a metaphor between several pieces hanging in a large room, such as a lobby of a hotel, convention center, hospital, or bank.

I really don’t have much more to say about this piece, not out of disinterest, but out of a sense of lightness and simplicity. The image you see here for internet distribution has my digital signature and date on it. I put a blank strip at the bottom of my prints when someone purchases one so I can personally sign it in officially approved graphite pencil, and date and number it.

It’s freeing to not have to write so much about my art. I had been writing a lot on previous blogs in order to kickstart some thought with regard to my art, instead of waiting and relying on experts and critics to write something. I have a strength with writing anyway, so I use it frequently in relation to commentary on my art.

I probably will write longer blogs in future posts of Art of eVan works, but for this one, I’ll keep it short and simple. Explore. Enjoy the freedom of mind that non-animated art provides for you.

Media with motion tend to put your mind in submissive states, telling you what to think, leading you to others’ conclusions. With non-animated art, you can free associate, and come up with your own stories as a co-creator with the creator of the piece you’re viewing.

I drew the drawing for this piece back in April, 2017. It had been hanging out in my sketchbook for a while after I drew it one cloudy day in a cafe near by. After applying ball-point pen, alcohol based marker, and pencil at the cafe, later that evening I splashed some acetone on to the surface to make the pen and marker media bleed. After the acetone evaporated, I then applied some water dirtied by some old Sumi ink. The water made the water-based ink designs bleed, which I had drawn on the surface earlier at the cafe.

What I just described is just the natural media and traditional means of image production. After digitalizing the image about a month ago, I made several versions of it. This image you see here has some organic matter I added as a layer behind the drawing elements.

Basically, it was a plant stalk I gathered from our garden in the back. I scanned the organic matter into an electronic document separately from the drawing.

It’s another example of results from mixing several sources of media. Moreover, it’s digitized, adding yet another medium to the mix. This illustration represents the meeting of media in an experimental communion. Media, to me, are just as important as the designs I make with them. For example, a line drawn by a ball-point pen is different than a line drawn by a Sharpie marker. Each medium has its individual qualities, properties, and characteristics, and, if an artist gets to know those traits well enough, he or she can let those traits express themselves more fully or experimentally.

As an artist, I have learned to “listen” to what the media are telling me as I create. They leave signs for me in possible steps I can take next in my process of creating. While I may be the active source producing the art I make, I also am like a medium that’s interacting with the other media during the processes of drawing, painting, gluing, cutting or whatever. We’re all like spirits who have come together in this moment making twists and turns beyond reason in the great intractable ocean of human emotion and the even greater flow of the Tao. The word “symbol” literally means “thrown together” from it’s roots in Latin. Things, such as media, lines, shapes, colors, and signs are thrown together in ever changing, non-repeatable patterns.

I called this series Rock Plant because of the rock resembling shapes I drew by the bottom of the picture in graphite. It’s a plant of my own making, with the help of some organic matter from nature, that’s growing from a garden furnished by rocks. There are some interesting wire-looking bugs flying around. I changed the color of the plant material into more bluish hues so as to approximate a closer analogy to the plant stalk I drew with blue ball-point pen. I’m enjoying working with the basics of drawing: Line, shape, form, and space. I’m enjoying the effects of multiple gradations and convolutions in space.

Specifications:

Title: Rock Plant (version 9a)

Source media: Ball-point pen, alcohol based marker, water-based pen, graphite, and diluted Sumi ink on sketchpad paper digitally combined with organic plant matter

Source drawing completed: 4/26/2017

Print media: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)

Digital manipulation completed: 7/20/2017

Dimensions of print: 34 inches by 26 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $90.00

Investment of print framed: $425.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

This one approaches a general theme I’m working towards. Hybridization is something I like doing with regard to traditional and digital media. I used to incorporate plant material into my traditional mixed media works in my last days of living on a farm in Nebraska. The farm landscape there provided an abundance of organic material, old found objects, and other unwanted pieces of junk from yesteryears I felt inspired to use for art.

This piece captures another dimension that’s analogous to the above pursuits. I drew with ball-point pen and alcohol based markers—which I purchased from a seller in China—on a used manilla folder that had some labels glued to it from a previous project. It’s this idea of drawing on pieces of paper that would normally be thrown in the trash. It’s this idea of taking snapshots of a corner of an abandoned loading dock for a warehouse where weeds are starting to take over the lot of asphalt. It’s this idea—which is nothing new—of developing collage work. Yet, it’s my unique style, my unique touch, for which no one else can generate. I have a rare vortex of power in me that allows me to produce creations of art that surpass much of what is made today.

I suspect that this piece will attract the attention of corporations who employ appropriation artists hired to hunt for innovative ideas from unknown geniuses they can try to imitate and claim as their own. I feel that good about this piece. Mark my words. Watch. You will start to see art like this in media and advertisements in a few weeks after seeing this. I know that I sound like a braggart saying these things, but, at this point, it’s one of the few things I have left. This predatory world is merciless in obstructing unknown people with talent from fulfilling our dreams as full time artists with sufficient amounts of resources and supplies required for our vision to be truly creative.

Most people don’t realize the amount of work that goes into making the art that I make. First, I spend unmeasured amounts of time making my art with traditional media, such as drawing and painting. Then I convert the traditional media into digital media by scanning it on to a computer. Then I spend hours manipulating and editing the newly converted digital media. Then it takes varying amounts of time trying to think of something to type up for a blog to go along with the finished digital image prepared for internet consumption. Most people just see the finished product, and, if they even think about it, they think it looks like an easy process.

I titled this piece Supplant because the organic matter is supplanted into the drawing I made on a manilla folder. The colors are perfect for the season as we approach the middle of Summer. I felt that the mosaic bodies resemble currents of wind, but they’re black in color. I suppose they can be thought of as nets of some sort, catching the currents of the hot Summer breezes as they hang on to the stalks of the grasses and weeds.

Specifications:

Title: Supplant (version 1)

Source mediums: Ball-point pen and alcohol based marker on manilla folder paper digitally combined with organic material

Source drawing completed: 6/5/2016

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)

Digital manipulation completed: 6/12/2017

Dimensions of print: 34 inches by 26 inches (or special request size)

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $90.00

Investment of print framed: $425.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

I chose to show this image right now. It really isn’t anything special. It looks like it could be found in a retail store or a furniture store as a generic, mass manufactured, deco art print made for an average family. I don’t care though. I just like the space that it illustrates. The lines also intrigue me. I was hoping they’d intrigue you too. I don’t expect much reaction from this piece however.

What I do in my art is nothing new. I have been coming to this realization more and more as I grow out of my younger, idealist, self-deluded stages. I post this piece here now as a blank stare into the abyss of meaninglessness. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a random capture of a piece of a larger picture I was working on tonight. But I like random captures. I frequently take note of ignored daily instances and situations, like a weed growing in the crack of a sidewalk. Or the back side loading dock of an abandoned warehouse from the 20th century.

What we have here is a number two on a ruler, indicating two inches and more, along with splotches from my spontaneous acts of creation while producing the drawings for this piece. There are some red lines also from some college ruled paper I used to draw on. They were that standard light blue that college ruled paper is printed with, but I reversed their colors in Photoshop to display a red. The spaces in between the lines also reversed to a near black. I liked this because of the outer space sense it gives the piece.

I’ve been feeling discouraged by art lately for a number of reasons. One, no one gives a shit what I make. Some might feign interest because they feel sorry, but they’d never buy anything from me. I reason that art doesn’t add to peoples’ lives in the sense of providing food, money, shelter, clothing, cool allies, potential mates, and so forth. Like this piece, art is a meaningless pursuit for insane people, or for people who are unwaveringly convinced by their own apotheosis.

A second reason I feel discouraged by art lately is the human obsession with technological advancement. It’s sort of ironic, too, because the word “technology” has root words from Latin that literally mean “the study of art.” In Western culture, before photography, there was painting as the main medium by which artists produced works of art. Artists strove to master, say, portraiture, mythological scenes, biblical scenes, or still lifes for example. There was no one, or no technology, that could create these forms of art better than human masters of art.

Photography came along and pretty much neutralized masters of realist and classical art. Photography could create portraits in less time, with less amounts of money, so it replaced painting as the main means of creating portraits. Artists today still paint portraits, but it’s by no means a mainstream sought after market. The technology of photography challenged artists and the art world to create art that photography could not, such as impressionism, or abstract, or surrealism. These, I believe, were major, major advancements in art. The imaginative, innovative movements in art from the 20th century have been exhausted by many an art historian’s assessment. However, we now have digital technology that can make homemade movies that cost a fraction to produce compared to what traditional movies’ budgets are.

In order to avoid writing an art history treatise, let me address the issue of artificial intelligence. We now have artificial intelligence that can paint paintings of portraits. We have artificial intelligence that can build houses in record time by three dimensional printing programs. Pretty soon we will have human sounding artificial intelligence manning call centers to talk to about the woes of our handheld devices. Our technology is replacing so many traditionally meaningful sources of human labor at such rapid paces that people, I fear, will be rendered useless in future automated societies. I struggle to find the meaningful challenges that will enable people to engage in quality enhancing activities.

So please, my valued viewer, find the meaningfulness in this ostensibly meaningless fraction of a drawing I made several months ago. I titled it 2X4 (two by four) because of the number two and the four blue distinguished splotches in the lower portion of the image. Also, because of the artist’s “block” I’ve been experiencing to varying degrees in the last few years. It’s a very logical, stable, Western philosophical image, college-ruled and linear with a few imperfections that mock hypocritical stability demanding managers of human cattle.

Please note that I officially hand sign my prints with pencil as recommended by the trade. The type you see on this image is just for example purposes only of where each piece of information shall be written. My copyright watermark will not appear on your print as well. But the date will.

Specifications:

Title: 2X4 (version 1)

Source mediums: Water-based ink on college ruled paper digitally combined with standard print reproduction on paper

Source drawing completed: 6/19/2016

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper (Note: print can be made with archival paper and printer if requested)

Digital manipulation completed: 5/21/2017

Dimensions of print: 31 inches by 24 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $85.00

Investment of print framed: $425.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

Because, because, because. Because I can write anything I want here. It’s liberating. In a way. I get tired and irritated with trying to form a thought or two with additions to my art online lately. So I think I’ll just randomly throw stuff out there. Like this piece. It was formed nearly unintentionally. In other words, I didn’t have a vision in mind for it.

The entire physical universe, as far as us primitive species knows, is composed of illusion according to ancient Vedic texts. The physical universe is called Maya, which means illusion. I recall listening to an interview with Linda Moulton Howe, the truly independent journalist who has spent her entire life journaling and researching UFO and alien phenomena. In the interview she noted three core abilities some alien species have over humans with regard to controlling the illusions of the physical universe. She said that they can create physically convincing holograms; they can effect invisibility (to the human eye); and they can manipulate space and time by controlling and manipulating the forces of gravity.

These postulates Howe spoke of about alien technology and mastery of the physical universe made total sense to me because of what I’d read long about about the ancient Vedas and the concept of Maya. If everything physical is an illusion, as quantum physics surely describes, then it would make complete sense that advanced species would be much more evolved in their paradigms and belief systems. To begin with, it would seem that beliefs held by conscious beings have an integral role in the formation of the infinite illusory realities they are capable of.

What does all this circumspection have to do with the art I made here? Because it arose from the random processes of my creativity while pursuing other conscious ideas I wanted to accomplish, I think it helps you take a step into some of the more spontaneous activities of how the natural world works, which is in a state of constant change. I managed to capture the frame of a certain state for you to glimpse.

I titled this piece Cave Flight because I imagined that the simple line construction seen at the bottom middle of the picture as a bird. It’s a bird that was painted eons ago by a cave artist on the rocky walls of a cave. You can see some of the black from fires previously burnt in the cave. It looks to me like the rocky textured areas of this depiction are like where a stalactite and a stalagmite met after thousands of years of forming. Behind this cave formation can be seen some paisley illustrations moving around—or suggesting moving around—in kaleidoscope fashion, ever changing with the fluxes and whims of the universe.