Should you really be here?
If you are here to read the posts on this blog, I feel that I must warn you that there is little of any value here. Get off your computer, or your phone, or your tablet, and go see something real, something beautiful, something that fills you with wonder. Go stand a while in nature and feel the way in which it delights your every sense.
I’ve always liked the little red stamps found in Asian paintings and I’ve wanted to incorporate something similar into my own artwork. In Japanese and Chinese paintings the seals often identify the artist, owners, collectors, and/or other individuals associated with the artwork over time. For my own work, I wanted to use African symbols that…
For an artist, or an artist of sorts, the transformation of the intangible creations of the imagination into concrete forms of beauty, expressions of emotion, or apparatuses of utility, brings meaning to existence. I am perpetually excited by the creative process required to bring an idea to life, for there is challenge in doing so,…
It’s one thing to make a frame and another thing entirely to paint one. Talk about a lesson in patience. Without climate control, a person is at the mercy of mother nature and she seems rarely willing to offer ideal conditions for painting. The winter has been far too cold to paint and though spring…
It’s a wonderful thing to be curious. So many of life’s greatest pursuits begin with curiosity. It is the force from which the greatest questions of life emerge: Who am I? What is the purpose of life? What is the nature of space and time? What is true love? To live your curiosity is to…
No, no, not a dance, I have something far less exciting in mind. Let’s make a jig to hold the wood block stamp. After completing the stamp, the next challenge was to devise a jig to place the stamp in the correct position for printing. So, I created a wood frame to hold both the…
For some time now, I’ve been chipping away at a block of wood. The goal has been to create a wood block stamp of an African themed design that I created a while back. While carving away each little sliver of wood, I have questioned whether this mode of creation is worth the time. It…
Picasso remarked, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Guided by such wisdom, I have stolen the techniques of the National Park Service (NPS) and applied them to this reproduction of their Glacier National Park map. The following is the original NPS map.
I believe that among the greatest challenges we face are the choices we must make as we build a material life around ourselves. Society, particularly western society, would like us all to believe that more is better. I think of Malcolm Forbes’ quote, “he who dies with the most toys wins,” and I wonder how…
What do you do when you need to transport a very large sheet of paper than cannot be rolled, folded, or crumpled? Option one, give up, go to a bar and enjoy a glass Laphroaig and a warm slice of chocolate lava cake. Option two, whip together a good old fashion whatchamacallit and then carry…
Drawing for Change 