Happy Openly Secular Day!

The work below is a recent SpinArt mandala. I like its bright colors and eccentric sort-of symmetry.

However, Nothing magical is involved in the mandala. Here on earth, as in the fictional realm of OZ - there is often a human "behind the curtain" of change, a human who is imagining things could be a bit different and manipulating, enhancing or wreaking havoc to make it so. Even so with the architectural beauties of a cathedral, a work of sacred music or art - behind the curtain is human imagining.
I believe in wonder which is really a form of imagination. Take a long look at trees waving their gorgeous limbs, clouds ever-changing, the sky or a puddle or stream or the ocean or the cat, or a work of art or some human being, smiling at the wild, random universe.. Those are the natural views that transport me, with nothing supernatural in the picture at all.

And so I am posting this picture and wishing you a happy day.

Ubiquitous entropy

Summer seems an odd backdrop for thinking about fall, but entropy is on my mind today. Ordered systems tend toward disarray. Everything that grows also harbors a limit of time, energy, health, of life itself. Nature ferments a slow cycle of wax and wane. These days, this is is not a popular thought. Yet, everything is cyclic, planets, plants, even people and ways of thinking about the world. All things bloom and wither. Things change in the world and in us. The interior world does not follow a smooth logical trajectory upward anymore than the exterior world does. Oceans rise. Rivers dry up. Things that are whole fall into parts. Things that have grown crumble into compost. That which crumbles doesn't permanently return. Something new might grow. And even in barren dry soil, a desert might offer it's subtle beauties. Selah.

The above picture I made in an online browser program. I was thinking about fall.

A view of land, water, sky

This new work was created entirely in browser-based programs, including DeviantArt Muro and Google+ Creative Kit. This work was inspired by a landscape workshop I went to last night. It was given at SCAN by James Grabowski - whose playful nonchalant approach prompted me to experiment more freely with color in the context of this landscape. All rights reserved.

Emerging from something or other

This morning's doodling. Made using Pixlr.com then finessed using the creative kit on Google+

More abstracts: Purple Neon Night

This composition makes me think of unexpected chaos at night in New York City.  I like all the reds, purples, and dark brooding smoky blues, the hazy blackish green on the edges. It seems noisy, exciting, yet it's too much and the viewer is hiding. I am not sure what I am making when I do this sort of work. I just keep adding and tweaking until I am satisfied with the effect.

More circles in pastel

Android artwork:

More phone art

Woohoo!  More phone compositions. Different phone this time. Virgin Mobile. Prepaid. No contract. I sold the iphone and ditched ATT. I had 4000 plus rollover minutes, paid for 450 minutes a month I never used, and was starving for data.  Oh well. On the bright side, I'm paying half the bill and now am getting mostly data and only paying for 300 minutes a month i won't use.  I don't miss iOS at all even though I'm only on Froyo Android. Made with a free version of the MagicDoodle app. Something new everyday.....

Seeing through the haze of actions and reactions

This digital abstract represents something for me today, namely - how hard it is sort through what is actually happening between humans.  Sometimes a person wants something from you - but it isn't obvious what that is. Sometimes you answer a question with what you think is your fairly simple reaction and step out into a mine field of replies.

It's hard to know what to make of it all. It feels like this picture, as if you were trying hard to see the simple line drawing or pattern through all this colorful and busy fog.

And in this technological world, sometimes technology allows people access to you at all hours, in a way someone you weren't particularly close to would never have had only a decade ago. Electronic communications can arrive when you are tired or half asleep or ill. They might seem to alternate between mild friendliness and something bordering on an aggressive insistence.  I have to learn not to check my mail so much and not to reply to email after say, 10pm. or before 8am. I really have to learn that. Like I had to learn not to pick up the phone and let it roll to the answering machine so I can deal with whatever it is at a later time when I have recently counted all my marbles and know where they are located.

Technology can also complicate things. Right under the "To" field in Google's webmail there is a line that says "Send also to:" which is followed by a list of people you might often email at the same time as you email the address in the "To" box.  If you have an oversensitive trackpad on your laptop (as I have on my Chromebook), you might hover a fraction of a second too long on the way to the Send button and find you've wisked an extra recipient into the "To" box.  Ah well. The kaffuffle is on - it always is I guess. Maybe life is just an extended kaffuffle.  hmmm.

The picture was created and edited on a phone, and then in enhanced Picnik back when that was available.

Abstract made in web-based browser programs

It's Xmas eve and the days are moving fast toward years end.
This picture was begun while sitting at Molten Java in Bethel this past Wednesday night. I connected to the web over the wifi and usedg Deviant Art Muro to make a few sketches. This was further processed later in Picnik

Sun, blood and darkness - a digital pic

Title:  Sun, blood and darkness. This digital abstract bit was originally an MS Paint file. It's last facelift was in Picnik. I have a feeling this little file should actually be big, wall-sized like a Pollack. If I could print it out onto canvas, I'd have some extra brush work to add since this file is small.

There is this sporadic, insistant intermingling going on in this picture. of the red and yellow, of the beige and black. For me it bespeaks the relentless stippling of ideas and culture. There is always disturbance and spillage.

Made with web-based browser programs

This new abstract was made completely with web-based browser loading programs on a Chromebook with a Chrome operating system/Chrome browser. These programs are web/browser-based and completely free.  If you have raged that illustrator or painter cost so much. Give them a try. DeviantArt Muro,  Pixlr and Picnik and others.

Fiddling with new program

I have been fiddling with a new program from the mac app store. It's called Paintr and it is fairly inexpense on sale for $7.99. This is my first experiment with the program. Just fiddling. I will be using this to sign my work digitally in the future as picnik has proved ahh, unreliable.

Digital Paintings: Deep Rest

This is a new painting I did this week in Corel Painter, obviously not realistic, just a whimsical view, a sleeper, curled with her knees drawn up, the whole body cradled in the gardens of earth. Ironically I drank too much coffee in the morning and too much tea in the afternoon and evening yesterday, and had a hard time sleeping last night. So this looks very comfortable to me today....

A Poem & Digital drawing regarding the "Heaven's Gate" cult suicides

Heaven's Gate was a religious cult a bit sci-fi in nature.  The believed a UFO hiding behind the comet Hail-Bop would "beam"  their purefied beings into another, better realm. First of course, they would have to shed their mortal bodies by putting plastic bags over their heads after eating poison tapioca pudding.

Religious delusions haven't changed much since I wrote the poem below. Since the early 1990s we have seen countless religiously motivated killings in the form of suicide bombers, the 9/11 attack, abortion clinic bombers and doctor shooters.  Cult suicide is a tremendous waste of human life and potential. Of course it can't occur without blind faith. Heaven's Gate followers believed these things because their LEADER told them so.  Just one more little reason to never subscribe to a religion of any sort.

.One-Way Portal -

As Earth’s mechanical eyes scan

this not-so-empty darkness, her restless

children ache to dance down galaxies,

chase cosmic winds on callused primate feet.

Unsatisfied as voyeurs, 39 webheads queued

at Heaven's Gate, backpacks at the ready,

humming at the window, eating tapioca.

They clutched plastic, vacuous and opaque,

waited for data retrieval, personal uploads

facing unrecoverable error, depression

deferred in bunk-bed suburban stillness, escape

velocity for the purple-shrouded dead.

They hardly knew their Mother.
Bury them in her darkest loam,
rich compost of stars.

April 6, 1997
©1997 M. M. Walker

-from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

  I was thinking about the ever expanding galactic structures of space and the even more convoluted eddies of the human mind when I drew this. As with all my digital drawings, it has been manipulated electronically in a host of programs over the years.

Historic Day!!!!!

Celebrate! Ring the bells! Then stay alert. Who knows what the ousted rascals will do..

Circularity 1 - more art made on an iPhone

This pic was made in an iPod app called spin art.