It’s called Pastel Ash because I used pastels to make strikes around the macaroni shape. I digitally amalgamated another drawing I made into this piece. It looks like some weathered trash stuck together you might find by the side of the road. Beside your fallible psychological analysis, I encourage you to find beauty in trash laying around. Maybe you could pick it up and use it for something, like a work of art.
Tag Archives: Abstract
Pastel Ash
January 10, 2020 · 5:45 pm
Hold
I am going to share this piece here for the first time I’ve shared on WordPress for a long time. I call it Hold. It’s a digital manipulation of a mixed media collage drawing I did a couple years ago. I like the endless multiple meanings found in the word hold. The complete abstract character of it gives it even more liberation with meaning and enables you to create your own story of it for yourself.
January 9, 2020 · 2:46 am
Height of the Humble Hoach (version 3)
Obviously I’m not worried about perfection here in a traditionally understood standardized, mainstream, commercial art sense. I also realize I’m really not creating anything breakthrough or revolutionary here as well. Nevertheless, the attempt here is to convey a sense of freedom and liberation from having to perform well in the execution of a work of art. There are innumerable decisions one makes in creating a work of art, and there are perhaps even more possible decisions one decides not to make, that could potentially be made, while making art. Many artists take the route of “what looks best” and “will this look cool to so-and-so?” Even art that’s intended to be rebellious on the surface is frequently merely an attempt to please another, or a group of people, when one probes a little deeper into the motivation of why an artist made this or that piece.
I realize many artists make their art out of a passion and love for what they do primarily. Yet, I still maintain that artists don’t live in a vacuum, and some of us must realize, at some point, that we are making art to show to the public, and to different audiences. It’s just inevitable that we will wonder how our art will be received. The more authentic and original an artist’s work is, the more we may worry how others will perceive it. Letting go of these worries is ultimately the best though. Some artists can’t let go however, and we get caught in webs, jobs, and circles of trying to please someone or a group of people.
I usually steer clear of posting works of art that are displayed on horizontal rectangular picture planes because of how they are reduced in size to the viewer when looking at them on a standard sized computer monitor. If you are using a smart phone, I suppose you could turn your handheld device horizontally in order to see more detail. Problem solved. This is one of my attempts to please you I suppose.
I call this piece Height of the Humble Hoach. It just came to me as I was playing with rhyming variations on the title “Flight of the Bumble Roach” written by The Residents. I didn’t know that hoach is a word, but it actually is. I looked it up and it means to be “full of” or “swarming with” according to the English Oxford dictionary. Its origins come from historical Europe with meanings of to “move jerkily” or to “shake to and fro.” I thought the object in the middle of the picture sort of resembled a bumblebee or some other winged insect. It looks like it’s cruising through the air too.
I wanted to experiment with tearing up drawings I made after soaking them in water and gluing them to new drawings, thus creating textures and layers. This piece you see here is part of a larger drawing I made for an art group I’m a part of with friends. That drawing is called “Absorb” and I haven’t posted it publicly online yet. This piece is basically the left side of Absorb, and it’s turned ninety degrees and flipped horizontally. This differentiated it enough for me to regard it as a piece in itself. For the foundation drawing Absorb, I applied some diluted white acrylic paint as splatters which soaked into the already wet surface. You can see some of that cloudiness in this representation. I also sprinkled some salt on top of the previously mentioned applications which created some interesting small craters and pocks.
Specifications:
Title: Height of the Humble Hoach (version 3)
Source mediums: Water-based and alcohol based ink on paper torn, and recombined with magazine print glued to paper as collage
Source drawing completed: 6/29/2018
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: 7/31/2018
Dimensions of print: 32 inches by 11 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Investment of print not framed: $65.00
Investment of print framed: $400 (shipping included)
Contact me: evan_travnicek@yahoo.com
August 3, 2018 · 9:06 pm
Quantum Flower (version 1)
Central seems to be the theme here. I put a “©” at the center of the picture. It’s actually the middle enlarged part of my Art of eVan logo. The letter C has all kinds of allusions other than just “copyright.” As I mentioned, it can mean central, and it can also mean Christ. The middle part of this digital image has what looks to be a cross. I hadn’t consciously intended to create an image of the cross, but there it was as I continued to zoom in, edit, copy-fold, and adjust the material I was working with.
C is also a symbol for an incomplete circle. Both the words “complete” and “circle” start with the letter C. As I mentioned, the original inspiration for making and using this image for my art wasn’t to capitalize on the letter C. It was to imagine a visualization of the quantum “fabric” of space and matter on an oceanic surface of an atomic and molecular level.
Atomic and molecular orbitals are what I’m imagining here. More accurately, it’s like a cloth or fabric of interlocking molecules as seen with their energetic, moving, waving, orbital qualities displayed in color and borderline non-physicality. It has a shimmering quality like ripples of light reflected on the surface of a body of water. If you look at photographs of atomic orbitals, the electrons circling around the nucleus of the atom are not solid, but are non-physical clouds of light. They seem like flames on candles, but have more organized sequences and patterns of “flickering.”
Specifications:
Title: Quantum Flower (version 1)
Source mediums: Magazine print glued to paper, manipulated digitally with Photoshop
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: 4/24/2018
Dimensions of print: 30 inches by 29 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com
May 22, 2018 · 7:55 am
The Heart of a Habit (version 5)
This digital illustration here is derived from two different drawings I executed on paper a couple of years ago. That was when I was fresh out of school having graduated with a degree in Health Information Technology. It was also after I had just attained my credential as a Registered Health Information Technician. I felt so proud of myself for accomplishing what I felt were these highlights of my life.
I titled this piece The Heart of a Habit. The two drawings I used in layering it together were Topology of Hearts, Hands, and Minds, and Happy Zephyrs. I created this digital amalgamation back in February, 2016. For some reason, I stopped making these mathematically approximated tessellations. You may see some influence of M.C. Escher’s work here. I started becoming more interested in liquid ambiences from applying water to water-based pen work, and rubbing alcohol to professional marker applications.
I’ve been trying to resolve a conflict for a long time with my art, and it keeps on morphing into my fascination with styles of art that are polarized. So, for example, Escher’s work is mathematically refined, and perspicuous, but Kandinsky’s work is the opposite, and, in some cases, is quite amorphic. I truly enjoy both styles of art: Optical illusion art, and abstract art. I’d like to make a bridge between Optical-type art, and purely Abstract art, which, to me, would be the ultimate optical-psychological form of art… at least at this point in time.
A habit is often unquestioned, and, like a heart, is hidden. One can only hear the beat of a heart if one listens closely. I make this comparison of a heart to a habit because, if one observes with curiosity, and without criticism, one often finds that a habit is used to fend off some unwanted circumstance or feeling. The word habit rhymes with the word rabbit, and rabbits run from danger. A rabbit’s heart races rapidly as it flees quickly from danger, such as a predator.
My art can be seen as a habit with which I use to escape the harsh realities of the world. I don’t think it needs to be pathologized however. I think it’s a constructive outlet for all the frustrations I’ve encountered in the medical and business fields. I’ve been making art since I was a baby, so it’s pointless to try to dismiss it as a neurosis. I am glad my art seems to defy George Orwell’s postulation that “all art is propaganda.” My art has become so abstract at this point that I feel it successfully escapes the orbit of politics. I just haven’t imagined a truly satirical, powerful, salient political art idea to illustrate for a few years now.
Specifications:
Title: The Heart of a Habit (version 2)
Source mediums: Water-based ink, on paper, manipulated digitally with filters
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: 1/22/2016
Dimensions of print: 30 inches by 30 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com
January 23, 2018 · 9:01 am
The Curvilinear Traveller (version 1)
Whimsicality and spontaneity are pretty hard states and results to achieve in art. That is, when you try to line them up with the love of beauty and wonder. Beauty and wonder do require a sense of design and order to some degree or another. I haven’t measured that degree, but it does seem as if there is some intuitive knowledge there at least. It all has to seem effortless, too, which is a state one works oneself into after doing doodles, warmups, practice runs, and exercises.
This piece here achieved a result of such whimsicality and near total spontaneity that I felt it satisfied a certain, but deficiently defined, level of experiment and discovery for me. I have been trying to achieve this level ever since. But this image you see here is part of a larger image I titled Astonished Buoyancy for which I posted here a while back. Astonished Buoyancy is more suggestive of a large balloon in the foreground, whereas this image has the large foreground balloon cropped so that it looks more like the curved surface of a planet in space. There is still an orange balloon shape in the background at the upper part of this illustration however.
I just became thrilled with the nebula and clouds pervading the space around the objects, which add to the life, dimension, and mystery of the work. When I was physically drawing the drawing this image was derived from on a piece of paper, I made sure not to get overly preoccupied with the lines I was drawing for delineating the forms. This is what I feel is the whimsical aspect. The spontaneous aspect occurred in the filtering of the image as a whole in Photoshop as I altered the colors, did inversions, and executed sharpening effects. The neutral washes and background colors became even more emphasized and psychedelic as I worked on the piece.
What’s exciting about it to me is that, as I work throughout my entire process of creation for an illustration, both traditionally and electronically, space seems to always want to express itself as something more than mere flat emptiness. It always seems to want to express something more, something just beyond perception, beckoning me and you to explore further, to travel past the obvious and discover whatever it is past the fold, hill or cloud radiating from this particular window in time.
Specifications:
Title: The Curvilinear Traveller (version 1)
Source mediums: Water-based ink, alcohol-based marker altered by lacquer thinner and rubbing alcohol on paper, manipulated digitally with filters
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: 9/20/2016
Dimensions of print: 25 inches by 24 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com
December 9, 2017 · 9:01 am
Hour Shed (version 4)
I call this one Hour Shed, as in shedding an hour of time. I think of it as an abstract, psychedelic landscape with a warped horizon. A couple of billowing clouds hover overhead, which are more like doorways to other dimensions. I just really have fun scanning drawings I make with mixed media. With the drawing I made for this piece, I used water-based ink pens (a Schneider pen), and alcohol based marker drawn on a small sketchpad. I then applied some water with an excellent flat head paint brush to make the water-based ink bleed. I let that dry, and then applied some ammonia as an experiment to see how the already applied media would interact with it. It didn’t really do much.
I then splashed some lacquer thinner over the surface of the drawing, which made the alcohol based marker bleed, and also the ink from the Schneider pen bled. After that dried, I applied some rubbing alcohol. The results left what I wanted: Discolored, blurred, cloudy, ambient, faded, psychedelic, bled effects.
I’d recently been listening to authors and documentaries discussing the hippie culture in Laurel Canyon during the 1960s. I already knew that the CIA covertly experimented with LSD on people unbeknownst to them. I also knew that the US government really wanted to find a way to divert anti-war protesters from attracting too much attention for being against the Vietnam war. So what I discovered is that the CIA helped to create the hippie counter-culture so as to discredit anti-war protesters and to divert young people into drugs, cheap sex, and other demoralizing activities.
I have always enjoyed abstract and psychedelic art. Much of my inspiration comes from the hippie counter-culture, including a lot of the music produced from that era. It’s just that I now see what purpose that scene served. Today, it’s plain to me that entertainers, artists, actors, and public figures get fame, attention and money because they agree to the CIA’s terms of spreading “American” cultural hegemony across the globe.
It has been known for years now that the American Abstract Expressionist movement was financed and nurtured by the CIA so that America could claim a culture of its own on the world stage. Centralized planners felt that America really had no art or culture up to that point when the Abstract Expressionists were forming, so the CIA decided to create a world stage for them. Again, I’m not repelled by the counter-culture movement of the Abstract Expressionists. I just note that they were allowed to become famous because they had secret state backing.
In my learning and research into art methods, techniques, psychological values, and history, I have come to conclude (perhaps for the time being) that art serves imperial purposes. It is used as propaganda. It entertains, amuses, impresses, catches attention, and thereby communicates messages consciously and unconsciously. An Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci called the proliferation of imperial culture, art, and propaganda cultural hegemony. This means that a dominant state—or superpower—superimposes its entertainment industry, such as Hollywood for example, on to subordinate states, thereby achieving a psychological penetration of the collective population.
Specifications:
Title: Hour Shed (version 4)
Source mediums: Water-based ink, alcohol-based marker altered by water, ammonia, lacquer thinner, and rubbing alcohol on paper, digitally combined with organic material
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: 9/18/2017
Dimensions of print: 30 inches by 16 inches
Number of limited edition prints: 25
Investment of print not framed: $80
Investment of print framed with glass: $400.00 (shipping included)
Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.co
September 18, 2017 · 9:20 am
Prayer of a Pillar (version 8)
The idea here is a beautified, glorified, abstractified column. It became apparent to me as I was exploring other design configurations. This piece is derived from, believe it or not, Ataraxy (version 1). Of course I combined Ataraxy with a few layers of other material. Another example of that result is the piece I posted here back in August, 2015, called Galactic Template (version 2).
As far as common history is concerned, the architectural usage of columns dates back to ancient Egyptian times of around 3000 BCE. The ancient empire of Egypt is said to have originated in that time period. I only theorize that there could have been great civilizations, not alluded to in contemporary history books, that existed thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of years prior to ancient Egypt. Associate professor Robert M. Schoch has done considerable research revealing civilizations our current model of history ignores.
I chose to post this piece now because I had noticed my recent usage of the word “column” in my micro-blogging. My blogging is, of course, influenced heavily by what I notice going on in the world, and by other professional bloggers whose information and insights I value. I like to rely on my intuitive sense of informational flows; one way I do that is by noticing repeating patterns, including words, sounds, and images… even feelings. Perhaps especially feelings, as feelings are the place from which most people make decisions anyway.
A column can define a column in a newspaper, or it can define the architectural noun. To me, a column is a symbol of strength, civilization, calculation, order, governance, continuity, and stability. Perhaps this sense is intended to be communicated by journalists’ official use of columns.
At the bottom left and right of this picture are what appear to be stalks of grass, composed of black mosaic pieces. Or maybe they are skeletal impressions of hands beginning to cup and shroud the base of the column. Anyway, whether if the finger-tips of grass, or the phalanges of hands, they look like they are moving into a praying clasp. Hence, the title for this piece: Prayer of a Pillar.
The metaphorical, amorphic fingers merely suggest the form of hands as if each mosaic piece is obeying the non-physical commands of an unseen field moving them to pray. I’ve seen imaginary depictions of what it looked like in ancient Egyptian buildings and temples, and it appears that Egyptian artisans and their governing priesthoods liked to use bright, bold colors to fill in the shapes, forms, hieroglyphs, and figures engraved on their walls and pillars. So my idea of a column here has a more Eastern and ancient character to it, rather than a Western, colorless, marble quality.
This piece has a lot of detail in it—a quality I wanted to achieve—with an appealing sense of balance and order. As many other pieces of mine, this work looks like it could be a still of a kaleidoscope. I also like to imagine that you are looking through a microscope at an exotic, alien world other than what you might normally see as cells and microscopic debris. After all, one of my original pieces in the Micro-Chimerisms series is titled Microscopic Works of Light.
I may add that the black mosaic phalanges coming up into a prayer formation at the bottom of this illustration can also be seen as the petals of a lotus flower. The lotus flower is an Eastern symbol of enlightenment, as they blossom on the surfaces of muddy bodies of water; from the depths of darkness, illusion, suffering, and mud is born enlightenment. So I’m really combining the Western prayer, the column of strength, and an Eastern symbol of enlightenment here.
These layers of materials, collages, drawings, and texts, along with multiple multi-layered symbols creates an idea I want to communicate to you: That we are multi-dimensional beings who perceive multiple meanings in the vast perceptions we receive and emit everyday.
May 2, 2016 · 1:13 am
Tri-Iteration (version 1)
Is it time for some therapy for non-physical beings bound and whipped by the addictive pleasures of the flesh? Well, whatever. Apparently, art therapy is the thing critics and journalists like belittling and criticizing as of late. I sort of don’t blame them due to all the coloring books for adults that even Wal-Mart now sells. If I were more paranoid, I’d say that centralized PR firms caught on to my doodling after observing me from all the surveillance cameras around every corner for the last few years.
I would work on larger more extensive art projects, but, for whatever reason, I’ve been condemned to doodle on scraps of paper glued together into collages. I’m becoming cooler and cooler with that as the world’s years hammer away at my trembling heart. It’s cool; I needed to develop some courage. I hope I’ve gained a thread of it from a badge of courage awarded from heaven.
Anyway, I titled this piece Tri-Iteration because of the repeated lower-case i’s in the lower part of this abstract illustration. An iteration is a repeated utterance. This drawing is basically the foundation drawing for my Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) J series. Besides the i’s, included in this picture is a t and an H. I suppose you political hacks could find a hidden connection there between the letters I incorporated herein, and current events.
Maybe my unconscious mind was trying to tell me and everyone else something. I wasn’t consciously trying to intend a message. In fact, this drawing was an attempt on my part to escape my over-thinking, analytical mind. Hence, “art therapy.” It allows me to rest my left brain, and enter the playful, experimental, careless regions of my right brain. Having been credentialed as a Registered Health Information Technician lately, I have been trained to think more scientifically, quantitatively, and rationally. I’m glad the artist self within me hasn’t been completely gutted by this world.
What I note to you about this drawing with pens, pastels, diluted acrylic, and collaged pieces of paper is that I used two new agents as transformative properties in it. I used salt and rubbing alcohol to help weather and distort the colors of dust and magic marker. In previous Wrecked Tangles drawings, I had struggled to make the wrecked parts of the angles and lines mimic nature’s and time’s characteristic features of entropy, weathering, stress, and crumbling.
I first made the frame around this piece solid colors with no interference, but then I decided it needed some pocks and perforations to give it a distressed look. So I copied a selection of the pocks, points, and perforations inside the image and stretched them over to the frame. I was satisfied with that result. It can be changed to solid if you want that format. I can also make the image as a print without any pseudo-matting so that you can get it framed yourself if you so desire.
March 17, 2016 · 6:13 am
Binarydom (version 9)
I went through three different names for this picture before I settled on Binarydom. First, I thought Binary Idiom because there are two commensurate pinwheels on either side of the image. I didn’t like that though because I couldn’t settle on whether if there were two idioms or just one divided in itself. Echoes of Hegel’s Unhappy Consciousness can be associated here.
Then I thought of Idiosyncratic Couple as a title, which actually sounds about right to me right now. The central theme that I’m developing here however is one of basic blocks and forces of universe building; or, world creating. The title Idiosyncratic Couple doesn’t completely work as a description for me yet here because the shapes, forms, and movements aren’t evolved to the point of human intelligence and relationships. I am sure many analysts will have fun with my interpretations so far.
I progressed therefore to the idea of calling it Manichaea. Manichaeism was actually an ancient religion founded by an Iranian prophet named Mani in ancient Persia. It’s basic narrative is that we live in a dualistic cosmology of good and evil, light and dark, and so on, resembling the Chinese Ying Yang principle. I gazed into my image and just didn’t see that blatant opposition in it however because the colors on the left and the right of the image are the same—there is no oppositional emphasis. Rather, it seems like more of a harmonious synthesis.
What you may imagine looking at here is two quadrilateral (square) molecules linked up together by ionic bonding. I know that there is no such thing as a square shaped molecule, but I like imagining it as thus in my development of generating imaginary universes. Most molecules usually are hexagonal and pentagonal in structure when studied in diagrams.
I henceforth concluded in titling this piece Binarydom. It’s a kingdom of two molecular worlds bound together in harmony as they travel over the nascent inchoate urges towards clearer definition observed in the background. I drew this drawing with gel and ball-point pens first on blank white paper. I already had some pasted together paper media for future projects, which I scanned into the computer to use for this project.
I made a template of Binarydom with just the white surrounding, excluding the colors and forms, and combined that with the background of pasted together paper media. I feel I merged it all together with a certain degree of success by my standards. I altered the coloring for some of the pisciforms so that their bodies are now a cerulean blue, instead of silver. I originally made their bodies with a silver gel pen. The silver didn’t show up as well as I liked, so I adjusted them to a blue hue.
February 5, 2016 · 8:19 am
Art of eVan 