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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.

My goal here was to capture the flame. This image is part of a larger drawing I titled Tree Fish. The blue arch on the left side of this picture is part of what I imagined to be fish wrapped around a fruit hanging from something. I became enamored with the right side of Tree Fish because of the balloon or parachute form whimsically described in the lower portion of this illustration.

I titled this sub-piece as Archimedes’ Light because of the ghost like flame that arises from the crown of the balloon. I was thinking of a buoyant lighthouse that’s traveling through some larger alien structures floating in the air. I chose Archimedes as part of the title because Archimedes discovered the principle of the displacement of objects. For example, when you put a metal bearing into a container of water, its volume and mass displace the water so that it occupies a space that the water would otherwise occupy. There’s an equation for this displacement principle. You can research it further from the last link I provided if you want to.

The small balloon at the bottom of this image displaces the air that surrounds it, and is supported by the air as it buoyantly floats through it. Imagine Archimedes is traveling on this balloon and he has a light that penetrates the density of the atmosphere as he devises a path to take between the larger bodies and structures near by. You can imagine yourself as Archimedes, or you can imagine that you’re traveling with him as you both do research into the fascinating, mysterious, and alien universe that surrounds you.

The minimal, whimsical approach I took in making this piece consisted of alcohol and water based markers applied to paper. I used acetone to cause some bleeding for the alcohol based markings, and I used water to make the water based markings to ripple smoothly across the ambient spaces. The dark blue is water based, and the light blue and reds are alcohol based markers.

I have been obsessed with professional alcohol based markers lately. Prismacolor makes a large variety of these types of markers. They’re double ended so that there’s a fine point end on one side, and a chisel or paintbrush point on the other. I recently lucked out in finding a deal for a set of 48 of these markers. At Michael’s, normally they’re priced at $299.99, but, one day, there was a 60% off coupon I was able to use, thus reducing the price of this set of markers down to $120.00. This effectively made each marker $2.50 each. Normally, each marker, bought singly, costs $6.99.

Previous to the above deal I just described, I was able to buy a set of 48 Artist’s Loft markers a few weeks ago for a similar deal. The Artist’s Loft markers are the markers I used to make the foundational drawing for this manipulated image. I mentioned the Prismacolor markers initially to describe to you the excitement I feel with regard to my current fascination with alcohol based markers.

What fascinates me about these alcohol based professional markers is the variety of colors that can be used. I had been wanting to collect a bunch of off color and neutral colored markers for my collection of art supplies because of a lack in the market I’d mistakenly and naively knew of prior to last year. Well, in my research over the last year, I discovered several brands of alcohol based marker makers that do indeed provide a wide range of colors: brilliant, pastel, dark, light, neutral, and everything in between!

I’ve also been interested in gel pens, ball-point pens, water-based pens, felt-tipped pens, fountain pens, reed pens, and other kinds of pens. Basically, as I mentioned at the introduction, I’ve been obsessed with pens. Since I have not been able to fulfill my dream as an artist with a large studio for the last several years, my compensation has been to downsize the sizes of my images, and to work with smaller tools, utensils, supplies, and equipment—the preponderance of the small if you will.

For internet production and consumption, this downsizing has worked out okay. Size is relative on the internet. Size is more determined by the screens by which viewers view art, whether if on handheld technology, laptops, or full sized computer screens. With my art, I include the dimensions, materials used, and other relevant information on my blog posts so that you are better informed as to what you’re investing in should you decide to share in the world of Art of eVan.

I like the sandy and stoney effect alcohol based markers give to the medium of paper after I manipulate my digitally converted drawings with filters in Photoshop. Rubbing alcohol does indeed have an unmistakable drying effect. Sand and stones are definitely mediums and symbols that lack water. That is, unless the relationship is that of a sandy beach that’s constantly being lapped by waves of ocean water. But even then, further away from the water is loads of beach sand that remains dry and scorched by a Summer’s sun. Anyway, you get the idea.

I titled this piece Read Tea (2B) because the markers I originally used for the foundation drawing are red. I used to use a color called Alizarin Crimson when I made oil paintings. It’s a standard dark red color that’s a staple for most professional oil painters. It’s a color that resembles blood. Therefore, it’s a natural, biological red. I used a couple markers from my collection that resemble alizarin crimson to surround an irregularly shaped target depiction.

As you may know, I have been fascinated with the bleeding effect that some water-based pens give after water is brushed over them on paper. I used that type of pen here, and achieved that bleeding effect that I wanted with the simple, hair-like scrawling you see transversing up to the middle of the target. It’s topped with a perpendicular line, thus giving it a capital letter T character. The letter T can be associated with the beverage of tea. Red tea tends to have a zinging sour taste to it intending for the drinker to perk up.

I sprayed and sprinkled some acetone over the alcohol based marker patterns, thus achieving some of the splatter marks you also see here. Acetone, like rubbing alcohol, after it dries, tends to parch materials of any moistness, giving mediums a stoney or sandy quality. So here I have chiseled out a simple abstract image with my chisel pointed alcohol based pens for you to feel in your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy it. I highlighted a couple tiny titillations of brilliant yellow and lavender around a couple of the dots near the center of the target to play with the notion of tiny intense points of color surrounded by vast areas of more neutralized color. I guess it’s playing with proportions, such as “the 80/20 rule” and so forth. In this case, it would be more like the 99/1 rule. Let’s make it the “98/2 rule” since that sounds less political.

Specifications:

Title: Red Tea (version 2B)

Source medium: Water-based, and alcohol-based ink, on paper

Source drawing completed: 3/4/2017

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper

Digital manipulation completed: 4/14/2017

Dimensions of print: 36 inches by 16 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $90.00

Investment of print framed: $435.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

I’m enjoying the combinations of abstractions and amalgamations here from different sources. All the sources have been made by my efforts of course. The fine text you see distributed across this picture in orderly fashions and directions, for example, comes from a layer I selected, copied, and pasted from Ghosts of Flower Bones.

I titled this piece Textual Sur Veil I suppose as an allusion to the surveillance, particularly of text, across the internet. Sur comes from Old French, which means “on, upon, over.” The slightly shrouded pink circle with circuit-like lines drawn in it I imagined for a moment to be like a bug placed in a Christmas tree. Perhaps it’s an ornament with surveillance capabilities.

I imagined a Christmas tree because of the brush-like foliage in the upper and lower parts of the picture. It looks like a curving stream of smoke is arising from a twig in the background thus adding to the notion of a tree. Perhaps it’s a match that was used to stoke a fire in the fireplace.

Anyhow, we are in the Spring season now, so writing about impressions of Christmas really is just adding to our recent memories from this last Winter. So these impressions that remind us of Christmas are being transformed subtly by the forces of nature found in Spring. The yellow-green background gives this sense of Spring. I blend the seasons of Spring and Christmas together in this image much like nature does as it knows not the divisions we humans superimpose on to it.

I decided to add a strip of white on the bottom of my images now to give you an idea of what your print will look like signed by me. I learned that prints need to be signed specifically in pencil in order to make them less vulnerable to fraud. It also provides a space on which you can see the number of your print when you purchase it so as to insure that it is a limited edition, and that it will retain its value. I also decided to start providing you with the information of the materials I used to create this image, both the traditional materials, and the digital printing materials. I round my labor around a generalized amount because each image varies in the amount of time it takes to produce it, from physical start to digital finish. There is definite labor and expenses involved in framing each print as well.

Title: Textual Sur Veil (version 1)

Source medium: Water-based, and alcohol-based ink, on paper collage and paper adhered with diluted wood glue

Print medium: Hewlett Packard printer ink from Hewlett Packard DesignJet Z2100 printer on Hewlett Packard print paper

Dimensions of print: 23 inches by 23 inches

Number of limited edition prints: 25

Investment of print not framed: $80.00

Investment of print framed: $400.00 (shipping included)

Contact me: artofevan@hotmail.com

At long last, I decided to post this version of a simple drawing I drew on a piece of college ruled paper under a month ago. You can see another manipulation of it in Aural Aurora, which I blogged about previous to this one. It’s basically derived from the same drawing. I just flipped the drawing on the horizontal plane for this piece. So I titled it Boolean Bellow Flipped.

Boolean is an abstract algebraic system that was developed by an English mathematician named George Boole. Boole is a surname of bull. The algebraic system he developed in 1851 denotes notations used to represent logical propositions, such as in computing and electronics. In computing, this translates as the binary variables of true and false. So here we have the notion of duality, but expressed in the title to a piece of art.

The large red and magenta bubble that looks like it’s in a slow motion process of popping reminded me of a bellow. Bellows used to be used to help fires grow in fireplaces. They may still be for all I know. So here I present to you this idea of a bubble popping, and a bellow blowing. Both of these ideas represent the expulsion of trapped or gathered air.

The air is directed towards the stick figure tree I drew crudely, but the tree, itself, looks rather unaffected. It looks like it has a protective bubble around itself, thus cushioning the adverse affects of some hot wind blowing its way. I drew the pink bubble originally with a water-based marker. I splashed water mixed with some old dusty ink in it to make the ink imbibe with the paper in random, fluid formations. I knew this would further help me create even more psychedelic patterns once I started digitally editing it with filters.

The straight lines of the college ruled paper are being obliterated by all the natural activity going on on top of them with the inks, and fluids. This is an expression of the balance between the linear thinking of Western culture, and the seemingly random—sometimes inexplicable—behavior of nature. We are all a part of nature. We are like conscious units that are able to reflect on nature however, making constructs to give ourselves senses of security, such as the stability of linear thinking.

Nothing physical lasts forever however. This picture helps to free up the notion that the rules of linear thought will last forever. It is my hope that Western culture starts understanding cycles, which permeate all existence, better. The poem I included in this piece reads:

In Wisteria,

Where the leaves wuther

In wonder

In wind swept eves,

Stars twinkle

In the ion pregnant sky,

Promising something unknown.

This is meant as a meditation that clears the way for something new, and letting go of the past. Empty spaces are often just promises for something new to be filled. Thus the space of emptiness is merely temporary. Hope is given in the line “in the ion pregnant sky.” I hope to inspire you with the random, free formations of brilliant color as expressed here so that you too may add your life to the spaces waiting to be filled in this world.

I titled this piece Aural Aurora to play with words. Aural pertains to hearing and and the sense of it with the ears. An aurora is a natural light phenomenon that happens at night in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of Earth. The word aura is found within the word aural, thus associating and suggesting the phenomena of auras as can be seen by some people around other peoples’ bodies. Auras are noted by these highly perceptive people to be fluctuating with a spectrum of colour.

This picture is an imagined combination of the above ideas described. It’s like you are at a polar region of the earth, and you’re witnessing Earth’s aura displaying a light show for you, but also including your aural sense. The vertical lines, evenly spaced, stretching across most of the picture plane in the background, can be seen as cosmic harp strings, playing along with the strokes and clouds of light.

I selected this image you see here as part of a larger drawing I drew a couple nights ago.  That other larger piece includes some poetic text I hand wrote on it. I plan on doing something with that too. But here, the irregular elliptical form in the clouds of the background nicely embrace the tree figure on the right, creating a sense of inclusion and unity with a night sky lit up by an auroral display.

This work accomplishes something I’d been considering as of late with regard to creativity, productivity, and ideals of perfection. Image making is the art of capturing something artistic within a fixed, two dimensional frame. All of physical reality is constantly changing. Even million year old rocks are changing on a molecular level, constantly. Sometimes image making seems like a neurotic activity to me because it’s an attempt to eternalize something that will never stay the same.

My way of coping with this unconscious futile attempt to fix and preserve something I may find beautiful is by letting the random, spontaneous forces of nature work through me as I relinquish many attempts to control outcomes with regard to what I produce. Watercolor is a good example of this. One can let the watercolor just bleed across a piece of paper and let it go where it may. The concept here is liquid. Anything liquid takes a path of its own, though artisans of all ages try to master it and control it.

Making art gives an artist a sense of control and mastery over his or her world. I like to question that sense of control and mastery by attempting to be random, and spontaneous. Artists train themselves to hone in on templates, such as the human body for example, and they attempt to master it by drawing it “better” than their peers. Better is of course relative, but I’ll just say that artists are really competitive. Denial of this is just face-saving in my opinion.

After civilizations die out on worlds, their ruins and remains are left behind. The Western world of culture I grew up in was and is filled with what is termed pop art. From Doritos bags, to Pepsi cans, to boxes of clothing detergent—all of these commodities are founded in pop art. My art is imagining what it will be like when nature recaptures the discarded items of pop art and starts returning their elements back to natural properties.