Red storm, still contained

Oh a sky full of storm and building and unseen wind, a disturbed feeling, unease.

This has been a very productive weekend. Productive but pensive. It seems I have begun a furious period of frantic work starting with putting out the first edition of my new lit mag which took every free minute for a while. Now that hepped need to do, the need to do in the face of news I do not want is keeping me fiddling at a frantic pace. I am rearranging my living space today too. What mess. Or is that my life, or the lives around me?

Well here is the new painting fresh and crazed from this morning.... Fiddling with layers and cutting out sections and moving sections played a big part here in the first stages of this piece. I also did some arbitrary rotations which bumped up the canvas size. Didn't know it would do that.  Or how about in blue....

Where petals fade, fragrance lingers

Eventually , the plants the blooming plants will drop their petals. I remember my one and only stay on Nantucket. I stayed a week, slept on the floor of some couple's living room. There was a giant wooden bowl on an old table by the window filled with petals that had fallen off various flowers. They dried but still retained so much color, still retained so much fragrance. I had never seen that done before. And Nantucket has so many roses. I was thinking of that bowl when I made this.

Caprice 3 in greens

Here is another caprice I just made in Corel Painter. I love the moody darkness and roiling multicolored patterns. It seems full of furious foreboding!

Caprice #2 - Blue vigor on a fine day

Another crazy bit I made in Corel Painter. Today has been a very good day. Interesting morning seminar at work on iMove and on Google Analytics. Quiet afternoon, boss away. And a three day weekend is coming!!! Also, I am pleased with the leads on my P1 stories as well. Here's one:

Tufted ears barely rotating. A sleepy look, a stretch. The slight movement of a dangling paw. All cats seem to nap once in a while, even bobcats. Recently one was seen snoozing right here in Redding. 

and here's the other:

Rebuilding the stone wall out front? Considering the addition of imposing entrance pillars? Repaving your driveway apron? If you live on an officially declared “scenic road,” a commissioner with a digital camera and a notebook may be watching. 

First issue of Bent Pin Quarterly Vol 1 No 1 !

   

Check out the wonderful titles and authors - view the table of contents with page links:

http://bentpinquarterly.blogspot.com/2007/04/april-2007-contents-with-links.html

brain center for metaphor found?

Is metaphor an unfathomable enigma to you or to anyone you know? According to research at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, a small region of our brains may either equip us for metaphor or limit us to literal narration.

According to researcher V. S. Ramachandran, director at the center, a region of the brain dubbed the angular gyrus is most likely partly responsible for the human ability to understand metaphor, according to a May 2005 article that appeared in Science Daily, an online science magazine.

The photo is detail of a mixed media oil painting of mine from long ago. It has hunks of broken  mirror glued on to the canvas board

What is art? some questions...

This article has been on my web pages in similar form for a few years.

This rose is lovely, but the plant and the photo , well they are not exactly art. But what is art?

What’s the difference between art and decoration? Nice colors, a pleasant sound, an emblem of some barely attainable perfection? Is it art or craft?

Or need it be a philosophical statement? If it's art, there must be beauty, yes? No? If it's art there must be a message, right?

Does art have a meaning, deep significance that transcends the generation in which it was created... or does it? Must the significance be a concept expressible in words? Or does art have to embody the ineffable? Is it a mystery? Is it “spiritual?” errrr....

Who gets to say whether a given work is "ART!" Is this solely the purview of self-declared critics, experts, appraisers, historians? The creation of current high-end market forces? The aspiration of cultural social climbers? Is the art of writing mere nattering? Is avante garde art the froth of madmen and misfits, practitioners of liminality, the product of twisted intellect gone astray?

I personally think that it's the spotty legacy of a species of ape that is materially and ideologically busy beyond any of its closest kin, an expression, a sort of cultural phlegm - the unavoidable by product of breathing and growing and moving in the surrounding cultural air when one is more or less allergic.

Do artists know when they are art-making and when they are just fiddling around? Or are those the same? I am just asking a few questions here.... -- mad mar (Mistryel) walker