Art of eVan

It speaks for itself. Let me be lazy and let your active imagination empower itself to roam across constellations and landscapes for your own self. Enjoy.

There’s just so much going on with this piece that I don’t know where to begin. I’m embarrassed to observe that the orange poppy flowers unconsciously associate with Donald Trump’s red hair. I’m not a Trump supporter, so please don’t think that this piece is propaganda NIP (neuro-imagistic-programming) for his campaign. Also, don’t label me as a Hillary supporter. In no way do I support that prison industrial complex expanding, Goldman Sachs worshiping criminal. I must, however, explain that my unconscious mind sometimes produces things in my art and writing that seem to be contradictory or opposed to what my conscious mind thinks.

Like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump is a trending phenomenon in politics because he represents a figure that supposedly stands opposed to “the establishment.” The establishment, of course, represents people such as the Clintons and the Bushes. I personally still am not convinced that either one of these “rebel” politicians on the left or the right truly stand for the people of America and the rest of the world. Endless facts produced by the left and the right condemning one another can easily point out how neither Trump nor Sanders will right the wrongs inside and outside of America.

I personally like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, independence, and freedom. It’s hard to fathom that Emerson was actually an American philosopher. Americans of today are completely reliant on Washington’s politicians to make them feel better about themselves, to tell them how to tie their shoes, for paychecks, and to regain senses of security by bashing the other party’s side well enough into some kind of temporary submission through a centralized corporate-state merged media complex. I feel that Trump, and even Sanders, still represent the neurotic attachment Americans have to super-heroes developed by the film industry. No politician will ever be able to save anyone, regardless of party. Alas! But I’m talking to myself again. Anyway, at least I’m filling some space writing here that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fill at least.

I got interested in drawing poppies and doing something more with them in art projects this Spring when I saw them blossoming around in my neighborhood. Their orange-red insistence, when looking at them, is unmistakable. It’s like they want to say something no other flower can. Poppies are known for being a source of opium and opiates. There are many other species however, most of which have no opiate properties. According to official science, there are about 775 known species.

Because of the association of poppies and opium is strong in this image, I can’t help but notice that the stems of the poppy flowers extending from the green center look like hypodermic needles. I want to stop here and explain that in no way do I advocate heroin usage. I will strongly point out what I think the drive behind such addictive behaviors is however. Since heroin usage is trending in America currently, I think this is caused by peoples’ needs to feel free like a kid again; people want to escape the ______ reality they are surrounded with in an unfree, law imprisoned world. Drugs, in general, give people a physical and internal permission to be, feel, and act out being an innocent child again, because, certainly, the authoritarian authorities roaming the landscapes of America’s aging cities will never give anyone permission to behave questionably like a child again.

Because real freedom has been stamped out of the American spirit in favor of the world’s largest military, millions of laws, and directions on how to pick your nose properly, citizens have been relegated to unconsciously seeking ways to experience the freedom that is their natural heritage in some way again. Unfortunately, it would seem that politicians are the only ones who have the power to give citizens permission to feel their rage, and drugs are the only sources that allow them to feel their innocence and freedom again.

The mandelic vortices surrounding the bush of flowers look like they could symbolically represent storm clouds, suggesting a rainy season. New Mexico, a desert, has been getting rain recently. We are entering a season locals call “the Monsoon Season” here in New Mexico. Officially, it’s called the North American Monsoon System (NAMS)for the Southwestern region of the United States. It’s a season that lasts from about June 15th, to September 30th where we get lots of rain, and it’s more humid than the usual dry, arid climate of the Southwestern desert.

I find that this image has associations with the Burning Bush as it spoke to Moses in the Old Testament of the Western Bible. Moses asked the Burning Bush who it was, and it replied “I am that I am.” This, to me, simply means that God can be anything. Everything is ultimately one to me anyway. It’s just that existence decided to break apart into an infinite number of pieces in order to experience self-hood and other-hood. In the oneness, I don’t know who to blame for all the suffering of separation: Was it God or one’s self who decided to become separate? God or you? How would you know since there was no difference in the beginning? Anyway, the flowers surrounding the bush can be symbolic of all the colorful personalities that have sprung forth from the One.

In between all the colorful personalities, you can observe, if you look closer, what appear to be birds with their wings extended between the two rows of flowers. They look like they could be Baltimore Orioles. I had not intended this effect while creating the tree-shaped bush of flowers. They are quite fitting actors for a piece such as this since it is a natural Summer scene.

The stems of the flowers, and the blades of grass, forming a half-star formation coming up from the bottom of the picture to the middle left looks like it could be the body of a primordial beast arising from the bowels of the earth. The sky is a rich pastel, but a darker blue, suggesting that the time of day in which this scene is depicted could be approaching dusk, giving the setting a more mysterious quality. It looks like there are many insects in the sky, indicating the beginning of the Summer season. There are moths, beetles, flies, little spiders and gnats flying around. Though it looks like an approaching nighttime scene, this picture is overwhelmingly a Summer season picture.

The missiles, or flying insect looking projectiles issuing forth from the edges of the flowers, look like totem poles, indicating an native island tribe quality, or perhaps an Alaskan tribe quality. I get the idea of blowguns, too.

There’s an artsy, unique style and fashion store at the outdoor Albuquerque Uptown mall called Anthropologie that uses art works consisting of natural found objects, and other media, crafted into improvised, mimicked, animate and inanimate lifeforms, such as water bugs, tree stumps, and other things. These art works are installed and/or hung on the walls throughout the store. I have found myself to be particularly impressed by them, and the store as a whole. I have never seen any store like it ever before. I feel that this image has elements of that kind of style to it, but it still remains my own.

I know some artists feel that no idea, method, approach, or style is possessed completely by any one artist, but I must say that no two individuals are exactly alike on earth. From this, I conclude that an artist’s signature style is truly his or her individual style. Others can imitate, and they do; some even do a certain style better than the original artist, but they still will never truly be the artist who produced the original style or theme.

One of the latest cultural rages is to have tattoos all over your body. I’ve noticed this trend increasingly over the last several years. Up in Nebraska, people are mostly conservative, so I didn’t see too many folk with tattoos all over their bodies when I lived there. I suppose more people had tattoos in the inner city of Omaha however. I bet this trend has increased there, too.

Here in Albuquerque, I see so many people with tattoos. Just workers in restaurants and super warehouse stores. I suppose people in the higher echelons of business and corruption just cover up their tattoos with long sleeve button-ups and ties. Is this ghetto? I’m rather proud of myself for not having a single tattoo on my body. It’s a symbol—or absence of a symbol—of my stubborn independence and to not give in to peer pressure. Yes, peer pressure continues on after high-school and college. It just upgrades to cars, lawns, bodies, wives, husbands, kids, and cell-phones. The fun of never having enough never stops.

I believe the fetish with having tattoos stems from the general aversive American attitude towards touching people, other than loved ones and relatives. I believe the ritual of getting a tattoo creates a very impressive—and painful—memory on one’s body. To me, it’s sort of a destructive activity, but that’s just my opinion. I know that tribes of cultures, not engaged in the obsession with worshiping technology, use tattoos for religious purposes. I haven’t researched those purposes to any degree, so I can’t expound on that right now.

I’m just noting the trend with tattoos. I’m also linking that trend with this new work of mine. Sophia, the name for the model I used in this piece, looks like she has large areas of tattoos on her integumentary system. The pattern of this tattoo is Meme Catcher, an altered illustration of mine that I blogged about at the end of 2015. In Gnosticism, Sophia was the syzygy of Christ. In other words she was the feminine expression of Christ.

Sophia is a Greek name, which means wisdom. Wisdom is connected with knowledge, but I’m not sure if they mean exactly the same thing. When it comes to non-physical terms, such as intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom, it becomes much more difficult to define and separate the terms so that they are understood in isolated and individual ways.

The tattoo on Sophia’s body looks like it has depth to it—like it looks like you are peering into another dimension—and the frame of Sophia’s body is the doorway as her skin peels away in a metaphysical apoptosis in her meditative physically unbinding state. She is sitting in a meditative posture I learned in Karate called Seiza. It is a posture from which a person can get up easier than from a full lotus meditative posture. Karate, by the way, is another activity Americans engage in as a hobby, which—not surprising to me—involves contact and touching other people.

In this image, however, the model is alone. She sits alone. While being alone isn’t necessarily necessary in order to meditate, it does create a state conducive to more intimate contact with the universe, God, one’s higher self, or whatever however. I put a drop shadow to the right of Sophia giving the contents past her body a sense of depth as if they were on a wall.

On the lower left hand of the picture are the words are “desperate struggle for self-determination.” I like the chasm your imagination engages in to find connection between a young woman meditating and whatever image you get for a “desperate struggle for self-determination.” The way I interpret that is that decision-making truly lies within oneself, and is acted on by oneself and oneself alone. Hence, the singular meditative figure.

I’m filling a national need here by overwhelming you with visual clutter. Since I’m an American in this current lifetime, I can’t help but let my artistic sensibilities express contemporary perceptions, imbalances, desires, dreams, and lacks in America’s collective unconscious. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone, but I can take a slice out of American pie and help you take a bite out of it with your eyes.

This piece is actually inspired by a pal on Twitter of mine who is a remarkable poet, and the song by The Velvet Underground called Rock and Roll. Rus Khomutoff, on Twitter, sometimes sends me links online of radio stations in New York because he’s from Brooklyn. I’ve never been to New York myself, but I sometimes think my vibe would jive well with certain scenes, cafes, dance clubs, music stores, galleries, and bookstores there.

This piece has also hints of Japan’s Rising Sun flag. Recently, President Obama made an official apology to Japan for the United States’ annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the end of world war two. Washington and Wall Street helped to industrialize Japan after world war two, and I think that the mechanical engine parts represented in this piece are symbolic of that.

Another association that comes to mind is Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses album, and how its front cover has sound megaphones attached to a pole on a landscape. Is it dawn or dusk in that image by Martyn Atkins? If it is indeed dawn, then that’s just one more link to Japan’s Rising Sun flag.

A pastime ritual of some Americans is collecting things, from coins, to stamps, to all kinds of retro and antique objects. I think this piece helps to convey that sense. After the Great Depression of the 1930s, my grandmother clung to a tendency to hold on to things, even items of trash. In my six year stay with her and my parents on our family farm, I started using some of that trash, media, and old materials from the past for art projects.

The need to have things together, to have enough to survive, and to be able to be within reach of necessities come to mind. Unconsciously, if many Americans could, they’d probably grab every other nation on the planet and pull them close to the United States for close monitoring and access to resources. The word arthropod transverses the middle of this illustration, indicating an organism, such as an insect, that uses feet, limbs, and joints to walk, thus implying the need to walk across water as an act of faith to touch other things and organisms.

My work here is part of a larger series called Mechanical Organisms, which is part of the overarching Micro-Chimerisms project that continues to be ongoing in the Art of eVan repertoire.

Arising from a piece I created called Mechanoreceptors back in 2012, Candy’s Candid Chaos was recently formed. I have been wanting to continue working on the female form in combination with my arabesque and mosaic designs. A lot of unexpected synchronicities occurred in the process of creating this piece.

I selected the silhouette from a picture of a nude female and placed my drawing, Mechanoreceptors, behind it. I unwittingly created a background for her form without knowing that it would become the background later. Then I selected the design filled silhouette and placed it on the background as the foreground. I’m enjoying it because of how the image, as a whole, merges together nicely due to the color combinations, and the intricate mosaic pieces.

The head of the woman looks like it has a gust of wind, or a breeze, wrapping around it. The circular shape circumscribing her middle torso fits together nicely with the left hand border and the rest of the background.

As a whole, this piece looks like it’s more random, rather than premeditated and organized by your average artist. The unexpected results from chaos and experimentation are what I have practiced for many years now. I feel this piece exemplifies that well. I named the female Candy in this piece. I imagined that Candy enters a world of chaos sometimes so that she can merge with its infinite, less defined nuances of imagination and space.

Chaos, being the original state of creation, gives rise to inchoate forms as they seek more and more definition as time unfolds. In this rather undefined state, Candy seeks a candid exposure of her multifaceted expressions.

As an artist, I have found the female form to be one of the most enjoyable forms to study and master drawing and painting. I gather endless inspiration from the female form. It seemed appropriate to me to add a hint of a story behind the female forms I sometimes use in my art so as to add a dimension of depth and character. I would like to ask some of my female friends some stories they’d be willing to share with me so I can expand upon them with my art and my writing.

This piece is derived from Ataraxy, an addition to my Micro-Chimerisms series, that I created last July (2015). I made several other variations from Ataraxy, but I felt this piece was the strongest. There are four other versions of it stored away for future viewings, projects, and shows.

I titled this structured melange Planet Hunting. I did so because the abstract mechanical object on the right of the picture plane looks like it could be a strange observatory that has several arrows pointing in a spread of degrees as if they were moving skyward. There’s a circular object in the upper left of the picture plane possibly suggesting a planetary body.

I like the notion that this image communicates the idea of aiming high, of shooting for the sky for one’s dreams. The dark background gives the mood that probabilities abound in the mystery, in the folds, in the countless unseen waves of space and time. There are what appear to be pillars on the lower left indicating an ancient civilization. Could it be Greek, Roman, or from the civilization on another planet?

Comparing ancient historical columns to textual columns was done half intentionally here. As I mentioned, this piece is derived from Ataraxy. I developed the columns, not from my original drawing, but by manipulating, copying, and combining new elements on to new picture files. It just happened to be that textual columns stood readily behind the digitally assembled yellow columns standing in front in this version.

There’s a large caldron or round iron oven in the low center that seems like it could be the dominant center of interest for the entire picture. But the fact that it’s dominant color is blue makes it a cool retreating hue. The yellow in the mechanical observatory off to the right and the columns on the left advance on the viewer as a louder warmer color balancing out the play of all the included shapes and objects illustrated.

Nevertheless, the round, blue, strange oven-like object still looks like it’s in the foreground, even though it’s primarily colored with blue, and secondarily, red. Perhaps it could be a steam engine, implying an abstract steam-punk setting. I like some steam-punk styles, but that’s not the core approach of my style, and the ideas I want to communicate to you. I like exploring imaginings of abstract alien technology, and obscure, archaic equations forgotten about in the vacuous, unfathomable echoes of our universe, and perhaps alternate universes.

I drew brackets, deltas (triangles), half-circles, and circles in different formations relaying my ongoing love of mosaic styles. As you may know, mosaics are how I see most everything when something is broken down—or seen—in its smaller elements. I like knowing what things are made of, and color coding helps me identify each part or element for the orders of greater and greater constituencies. For example, all the different organs of the human body are assembled into one unique organism or individual.

Of course we could explore the non-physical entity that animates and holds an organism together according to biological scientist Rupert Sheldrake’s theories of morphological resonance, but I recommend listening to any one of the talks or interviews of Sheldrake that you can find on Youtube.  He implies that organization is done by non-physical intelligent design.

Toilet Scrubber (version 4)

35 X 30 inches

Print of drawing, cutout/collage material (paper and digital)

There are causes for which I named this piece thusly that I shall leave up to other parts of your mind to figure out. In the meanwhile, let’s explore for a few moments why I used the words I did here. The round headed object repeated at the center of interest looks like a toilet scrubber with its bristles and handle.

I thought of titling it Toil Rider, as one sort of rides toil when one cleans the bowl of one’s toilet. I wanted to give the image a sense of adventure and fun however, while mocking a chore that requires attention regularly. But then I just thought, “what the heck,” and I decided to just call it Toilet Scrubber. After all, that’s what it looks like. At least to me.

There are several toilet scrubbers in this piece. It looks like several repeated frames of a toilet scrubber in movement as it swishes around the bowl. Though, initially, you might be repelled by the whole idea, this piece would go well with your bathroom. It can serve as a diving board for inspiration as you ponder upon things while mentally belaboring one thing after another.

I combined an airplane view looking straight down at some industrial sites with a Micro-Chimerisms mosaic I’d drawn. The Micro-Chimerism I drew was drawn on the page of an old coffee table book exploring paranormal phenomena. I like doing ostensibly random things like this—layering seemingly unrelated subjects and items—in order to create new dynamic orders.

Creative destruction is the main theme of this hybridized collage. A few days ago, I cut out some images and text from a few old magazines I’d purchased at second hand stores. At the time, I fit them together into a spoked wagon wheel composition. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d use them in a future design. Here is the result of that initial inspiration.

Earlier today (Sunday, April 17th, 2016), I was drawing some of my energetic abstractions I’ve developed over the years. After leaving the cafe I was sitting at, I started getting some ideas on how I’d use the cutout magazine material I already mentioned. I also knew I wanted to incorporate the drawings I’d just done. Upon returning home, I started scanning in the magazine cutouts and the drawings. Then I transferred them to my image editing program.

While at the cafe, I was listening to some classical music I feel explode with power and thrust. You see, when I first came to the cafe, I was listening to a classical station on the radio in my truck. They were playing Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. I could feel the power chords resonating in that piece, but I hadn’t consciously formulated that assessment in my mind at that point.

So while I was in the cafe, I decided to listen to the Slavonic Dances on my iPhone. Then I decided to listen to the Overture of William Tell, by Rossini. I intuitively sought out more music I felt also had a powerful thrust to it. Then I thought of listening to the Ride of the Valkyries, by Richard Wagner. I topped off my desire for forceful, thrusting, power music with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Tchaikovsky’s Overture was an excellent climax because of the cannon explosions that can be heard in it towards the end.

While listening to the last two pieces I mentioned, I started to write some of my thoughts down. As I mentioned, this piece is about creative destruction. It symbolizes the awesome creative / destructive power of natural phenomena, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and vortices in water. The power of the classical music I listened to felt excellent for inspiring a person to clear out mental detritus, such as anxiety, hesitation, procrastination, cowardice and so forth.

I feel that destructive forces in nature are necessary forces that clean away old, rotting, obstructive, stagnating, lingering elements that have already served their purposes in the greater balances that constantly fluctuate throughout the universe. In this imagery, in which several parts coincide, I combine the power of thrusting, forceful classical music brimming with confidence, and an abstract depiction of a hurricane. It looks like the dark, swirling vortices have approached from the upper right from an ocean on to the bay of an old city, heading down across the land to the lower left of the picture.

The complex detail of the cityscapes, skies, and text would be near complete chaos if it weren’t for the wagon wheel composition around which they are all assimilated. I made sure there was also a straight line transversing across the entire picture plane. Another symbolic dimension I imagine that can be highlighted in this piece is a bow and arrow with the arrow aiming towards the upper right. I like to see multiple things in the abstract works of art I create. I am pleased when people see things in them that I’d never thought of.

I intuit that people generally gravitate towards art that isn’t too complex and chaotic. Identifiable objects, and simpler abstract shapes, are concepts people can grasp and feel senses of confidence and security with. An approach I’d been experimenting with for a while now is complexity. A philosophical idea I’d been pondering lately has to do with a polarity between absolutely void space, and completely filled solidity.

Art works that are amassed in complexity and chaos approach a paradox for me. I considered the notion that space is perhaps the ultimate filled solid, but its “matter” is so infinitely subtle that it appears to be a vacuous medium through which we can travel. Space, being one side of the polarity between itself and total solidity, is really just part of a polarized environment of creation. This ultimately makes matter and space one when looked at holistically; being and nonbeing are also dual parts of this greater existence. But the play of contrarieties must continue in order for the fluctuating spectrums of all existences to differentiate and experience something other than absolute unity.

In conclusion, I titled this piece Clocking the Mess because I used a magazine cutout of the face of a watch. Of course it represents time, and the main line transversing the picture represents the traditional Western linear concept of time. It also highlights the pathway for which the abstract hurricane is traveling across. The “mess” is all the intricate detail characterizing the image as a whole.

Meander across the page, does a weaving path of mosaic shapes in this illustration. I wanted to use one of the paper collages derived from various books, printouts, and lists I’d made over a year ago. The particular collages I used had been sitting around for a while because I didn’t feel bold enough to tackle the projects I knew I wanted to carry out on them. The collages came from a large eighteen by twenty-four inch piece of paper on which I glued various other paper media materials to. I cut up the collage into smaller pieces, thus providing myself future material for more works than one, though smaller.

Here is the result of what I drew on to one of the cut out collages. I didn’t feel bold enough to engage in these preparations because I was worried that I wouldn’t make anything that would satisfy the standards I’d set with previous successes. In an instant, I decided one day—a few days ago—that I would just start drawing on one of the collages with some magic markers that I have readily available in my little studio.

The result here is identical to the original drawing in composition, but not in color. The colors in this version are completely different. After tinkering, filtering, and manipulating other versions, I came to this version number nine, and felt a degree of success that satisfied me. I hope it visually satisfies you, too. Art is like food for the soul, and eyes are like the mouths that consume art’s cornucopia of visual taste and experience.

A friend had mentioned that my art looks “Kleeesque” to me one time, and I hadn’t thought about Klee’s art for some time now. I used to be very inspired by Klee’s work years ago. I remember checking out a huge book from the downtown library in Riverside, California on Klee’s work a long time ago. I would listen to Tchaikovsky’s Nut Cracker Ballet after I took the books home I checked out at the library, and turn the plates of images of Klee’s art in color with awe.

I used to be obsessed with Van Gogh’s art; I wanted to paint exactly like he did. I did a couple paintings and drawings that resembled Van Gogh’s style, but mostly I felt frustrated that I couldn’t do what Van Gogh did. At a certain point, I started asking myself if I wanted to be known as an imitator of Van Gogh’s art. I realized that I wanted to develop a style of my own. In my studies of other artists, I found the cubists, the surrealists, and Paul Klee to help me explore other avenues of expression. I resolved a sense in me that I would use Van Gogh and Paul Klee as a sort of polarized standard for which I could bounce back and forth the ideas of my own that I was developing.

This digital representation harkens me back to that stage of development in my artistic career. I titled it Be To The How as a poetic play on words. While there is no bee buzzing around in this organic portrait, it seems like there possibly could be. Nonetheless, “be,” as in “being,” is an existential notion, and I felt that the relationship between being and action (how to) was a pertinent observation. It looks like a being—perhaps a worm—is learning how to travel across a forest of grass and flowers as it stumbles across a bit of enlightenment for it’s culminating lesson for the day.

You can see some of the text and graphics from the collage showing through the colorful shapes I’d drawn on to them in this piece. In future projects, I’d like to let the graphics and text be less covered up by my drawing so as to give more play and emphasis to the collage work I accomplish.

This piece is 23 x 19 inches

Matted, glassed, and framed, this piece is: $400.00

Postage and handling is: $50.00

For a total of: $450.00

(I recommend you get the print glassed yourself, instead of me glassing. This is so you can avoid possible broken glass when you receive it).

Price for an unmatted print is: $90.00

Postage and handling is: $5.00

For a total of: $95.00