Arts Council of Monterey County Grant Enables "Boomers" Portrait Project

Beginning this month and over the next twelve-month period I’ll seek out, interview and photograph a dozen or so members of a specific group of Monterey County residents. This will be the prelude to painting their portraits and writing their biographical essays. Qualified residents who volunteer for my project are those born between the years of 1946 and 1964 - in other words Baby Boomers, the generation born in the immediate wake of World War II. Project participants will represent diverse ethnicities, cultural traditions, gender orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. These portraits, along with the corresponding biographical essays I write will be the subject of a public art exhibition a year from now.

Through a generous grant from the Arts Council of Monterey County my project Boomers of Monterey County will allow me to apply my unique visual style to portraits of an aging demographic that represents nearly a quarter of the U.S. population – a demographic in which I also belong. At a time where “Boomer” is a word some consider an epithet, I design this project to convey to that subject population that “You matter. You matter to the well-being of this country, to history and to me. You deserve to be seen and heard.” The project serves as a retrospective for those of us within that demographic, and as visual reminders of the commonalities shared with younger folk as well as the unique challenges those of our generation face. I’ll also explore through this project the ethics of portraiture, the implied vulnerability versus empowerment of the person who gazes as opposed to the one who is “seen”, the historical traditional portrait-painter power imbalances and how this relates to gender and class.

The magical realist surreal portraits I paint will be unlike what one might imagine of commissioned formal portraits in which the posed sitter is the clear the subject of the portrait. The Boomers of Monterey County project does not simply document the physical likeness of someone at a given point in that person’s life passage. My portrait paintings are undeniably as much about my perception of another and the personal choices I make to graphically render what I observe. As I believe is the case with all art, a portrait painting is ultimately a three-way conversation among the minds of sitter, artist and ultimately the viewers of the portraits at any given time in history.

I will offer Boomer volunteers a small monetary compensation - that’s right, the artist is paying the portrait subjects. Participants will sign model releases allowing me to take as many photographs as necessary to capture the candid expressions of their emotional and intellectual engagement with me in conversation about their lives. However, while these photographs serve solely as my visual references. I’m not aiming toward strict photographic likenesses in their painted portraits.

As a departure from my usual acrylic painting styles, this time I envision mixing different media, rendering their portraits with collage, acrylic, oil and spray paints. I’ll paint this new series of portraits in as new, experimental and bold a visual style as the way I now feel, rendering as tightly or as loosely, as literally or as fantastically as my interpretation of the sitters and their environment dictate. I would like these new portraits to be as much a revelatory surprise to me as they’ll be to my sitters and the public viewing them. I anticipate this creative art project could be the most challenging for me to date in many ways.

If you’re a member of the Baby Boomer generation and are interested in possibly participating in this project over the next twelve month period, I would gratefully invite you to contact me immediately at info@edwardmcorpus.art; and If you haven’t as yet done so, please sign up for my Art of Dreams newsletter to keep abreast of the project and upcoming exhibitions.

Grateful to Receive Arts Council for Monterey County 2023 Artist Grant!

I am honored to be among the twenty-two emerging and established artists receiving the Arts Council for Monterey County Individual Artist Grant for 2023.

"The Individual Artists Grant program was created to recognize artistic excellence, provide direct support to artists who demonstrate they are ready to take their work to a new level, and cultivate public appreciation of the role of artists in our community."

My fellow artists recognized:

JC Gonzalez
Joe Angel-Toledo
Katie Raquel
Omar Rodriguez
Andrew Jackson
Salvador Sergio Lua
Darlene Von Maschmeyer
Lee Abellana
Katie Herzog
Katrina Pura
Hanif Panni
Jess Marie Soriano
Michelle Djokic
Alejandro Gomez
Victoria Donahue
Antoine Cameron
Lori Bala
Jessica Bovert
Noelle Correia
Mai Ryuno
Mark Baer

Short statements by these artists including mine can be seen on the Arts Council website and on YouTube.

I’ll be posting details of my Boomers of Monterey County portrait and biographical essay project in subsequent posts, along with an open invitation to all who qualify and wish to participate. This generous and timely grant funding will allow me to purchase new artistic media and apply experimental techniques that will push my creative work to new directions.

Once again, a heartfelt thank you to Arts Council of Monterey County and grant jurors.

This Website Has a New URL and Email Address

My website portfolio and blog now has a new URL - edwardmcorpus.art - and my new contact and newsletter email address info@edwardmcorpus.art .

Longtime followers can remember how as late as last week the website URL was “emcanimator.com”. (Clicking on the old URL will automatically re-direct to the new one, at least for a year.) This old URL dates back some twelve years to Great Recession days, when I was a student of graphic design and animation. I thought at that time that digital animation would figure much more heavily in my career choices, hence "emc-animator".

I still love digital art and animation. I enjoy viewing classic animation old and new - and continue to use animation and 3D applications on occasion. My (hopefully) last day job was in graphic design. My graphic applications are incredibly useful for visualizing concepts that eventually evolve into the paintings and drawings I execute in wet and dry media like oil, acrylics, watercolor, charcoal and whatnot. You can still view some of my animations work - including the 2011 Outstanding Vision award-winning Capstone video Multiforme: A Digital Animation About Brain Cancer - on vimeo.com/emcorpusgraphicarts.

However, my emphasis has always been on my magical realist paintings and drawings. I decided to change the URL that my artwork had outgrown a while ago to the more apropos and timely edwardmcorpus.art.

Taking an Art-making Break

…for some much-needed art-seeing.

I visited several of the fifteen galleries all located in the Minnesota Street Project building in San Francisco. Work by the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is featured at the Bitforms Gallery's EXCUSE YOU! exhibit here. Here I am standing in his Bilateral Time Slicer.

His explanation of how it works:

"A biometric tracking system finds an individual's axis of symmetry using facial-detection software. When the axis is found, the computer splits the live camera image into two slices, to be

displayed in a vertical orientation. With each new participant, time slices are recorded, then pushed aside. When no one is viewing the artwork, the slices close in and rejoin, creating a procession of past recordings. The piece is inspired by time-lapse sculptures and masks found in ancient traditions—Aztec three-faced mask, the avatars of Vishnu, for example—and modern and contemporary art—Duchamp, Balla, Minujín, Schatz, and Kanemaki, among others. Like in the tradition of the Aztec three-faced mask, the central strip corresponds to the younger, most recent portrait, whereas the farthest ones on the sides represents the oldest portrait."

The thought just occurred to me, though, that this is a computerized version of a funhouse mirror.

2023 Got Off to a Rocky Start

2023’s art began with weeks of overthinking and a mess of a false start, which came grinding to a halt when I abandoned a painting for the first time in three years. This ever happen to you?

It’s kind of like the way life’s been until now.

It took a weekend of breathing deep and slow - and going out to enjoy other people's art - to get reinspired.

Fired up with new ideas and a fresher outlook I restarted from scratch with a tighter composition, flipping 'The Witch' onto its short side and painting it over in chromatic blacks.

The good news is that the last time I abandoned a painting I restarted it. A little over a year later it became Rose Room. No guarantee this new painting is going to work out and be forewarned - it's possibly the strangest work I've ever done - but I'm liking it better each day.

Kind of like the way life is - starting now.

A Riff on Joy and Pain

On February 4 this past week, one Harry Whittington died at the age of ninety-five. Seventeen years ago Whittington’s Warholian fifteen minutes of fame received a literal shot in the arm when he was actually shot in the face – and elsewhere - by our illustrious then-Vice President, Dick Cheney.

It’s not my intent here to rehash the dubious circumstances of the so-called quail-hunting accident, or the fully loaded satiric ridicule to which Cheney was subjected except to say it was the shot heard ‘round the world.

The recent mention of Whittington in news media evoked memories of my own guilty indulgence in schadenfreude, at the time repeatedly listening to Cheney’s Got a Gun, Bob Rivers’ parody of the Aerosmith song. In fact, I just brought it up on YouTube and listened to it again. It’s an excellent parody. Rivers sufficiently nails Steven Tyler’s hard rock singing style to make it work.

The triggering of memories didn’t stop there, though. Dick Cheney and his weapon of mass destruction was forgotten as I felt an urge to revisit another Aerosmith music video, one I hadn’t listened to in many years, Amazing.

Call it my state of mind, but the song called out to me - a rock and roll anthem evoking not hilarity and schadenfreude but the tearful emergence into the light from the dark spaces I’ve lately been.

It's amazing.
With the blink of an eye, you finally see the light.

Sure, the graphics are dated and cheesy by today’s CGI standards; but they’re not the point, at least not for me.

The video depicts teen lovers, their lips passionately engaged and limbs entwined atop a motorcycle careening full tilt on roads and through space, feats of raw abandon only safely accomplished in fantastic virtual reality settings.

It evoked for me the poignant emotions of loneliness and longing; remembrances of the heady flight through time and space that is romantic love; the melancholy of adult knowing that such love doesn’t last; that things change and come to an end; but also, as Tyler entones at the end of the song, 'remember: the light at the end of the tunnel may be you.'

It's amazing.
When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright.
It's amazing.
And I'm sayin' a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight.

This is the function of art, this being an instance of the evocation of thought and emotion that the best art of any kind can do. Sometimes even bad art can do it - if the humanity of the artist somehow connects with that of the experiencer of the art; that is, to connect with the light at the end of the tunnel. Or, to be the light oneself.

Will this evocation and mood last? Will this just be another dated rock song in my mind later?

Life's a journey, not a destination,
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings.

All I can say about life right now is, it’s amazing. And I’m saying a prayer for all desperate hearts tonight.

Darren Braun, photographer
Leslie Baldwin, photo editor
T. J. Tucker, Art director
Cover for the Bum Steer edition
of Texas Monthly

Addressing Toxic Masculinity and Patriarchal Culture Through Art

A recent newsletter essay by author and journalist Daniel Pinchbeck alerted me to the online Twitter duel between environmental activist Greta Thunberg and misogynist right wing media provocateur - and now alleged human trafficker and rapist - Andrew Tate. To my reading Pinchbeck attempts to address the toxic masculinity espoused by men such as Tate as a lightning rod obscuring rather than enlightening communication regarding the existential threat of climate emergency.

I’d like to speak about an urgent cultural issue that I believe Pinchbeck fails to address, one that I attempt to address and subvert through my visual art and writing. We know and acknowledge that dominant patriarchal culture oppresses women. I’m speaking specifically to that same dominant patriarchal culture’s oppression of young boys, a culture that from an early age engenders toxic masculinity. Boys grow up – in a manner of speaking – to be young men. We as a society need to address the larger cultural problem if we’re to correct what I call the blood curse of toxic masculinity and allow men to actually grow up instead of becoming the emotionally stunted individuals that Tate and incel* culture represent.

If you find following popular trends in the news as generally distasteful as I do, I’ll briefly bring you up to speed on what I learned only recently myself about this character. A former professional kickboxer, Tate has been banned from various media platforms including Twitter for his online screeds advocating male dominance and “putting women in their place” more or less explicitly by violence. What should be to no one’s surprise, on taking ownership of Twitter Elon Musk reinstated Tate’s account. Tate apparently is widely followed by the predominantly white and male right wing, and has also developed into a hero for the incel* crowd.

In a Twitter rant this past Wednesday December 28, 2022 that I can only categorize as batshit, Tate addressed environmental activist Greta Thunberg to brag about eating pizza from non-recycled pizza boxes and his ownership of thirty-three cars. With barely veiled lewdness he proposed that Thunberg give him her email address, so “I can send you a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions”.

Greta’s appropriate and devastating one-line Tweet: “Yes, please enlighten me. Email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com”.

Metaphorically shooting himself in the foot by posting an online image of himself with those pizza boxes apparently alerted police to Tate’s current whereabouts in Romania. The following day he and his brother were arrested under suspicion of involvement in an international human trafficking organization and alleged rape. As I stated in a recent blog post, I quit Twitter soon after Musk acquired it. I don’t anticipate ever going back and so haven’t followed on subsequent Twitter reactions, except that after Tate’s arrest Thunberg trolled him over those pizza boxes.

From my artist’s statement:

“Patriarchy at its core is the first inequality, a hierarchical structure that emphasizes male dominance, cutthroat competition and rejection of women’s equality. Fear of “the Other” is manipulated to impose further layers of inequality, demonizing ethnicities, religions, gender identifications and economic standing other than one’s own. Patriarchy ultimately oppresses all peoples, men and women. My images combined with written words intend to expose and subvert the cultures of inequality.”

On the days that I attended my recent solo art exhibition I observed viewer reactions to my acrylic painting The Boy In the Mirror. It’s not a rigorous scientific survey, but the reactions seemed evenly divided between those genuinely fascinated enough to gaze awhile or interested enough to speak with me about its’ “meaning” and those who quickly glanced and walked on by.

I contend that the violence implicit in toxic masculinity is embedded in current culture. A male child is unavoidably born into it. I subscribe to the sentiment expressed by former NFL athlete, pastor and educator Joe Ehrmann in the Representation Project’s film documentary The Mask You Live In that “the three scariest words you can say to a young boy is ‘Be a man’”. Ehrmann disavows what he learned from his father as a young boy, that dominance and control is what is means to ‘be a man’ and that real men “don’t feel, don’t want, don’t need”.

One male visitor visiting the gallery where I exhibited told me he believed my painting was about one young man who was insecure about his manhood; and that he (the viewer) had no such insecurity, making the painting not relevant to him. While one surely can view the representations in my painting The Boy In the Mirror from the standpoint of gender dysphoria, this is only one of a number of valid interpretations.

I’d emphasize that I’m not addressing a “gay” versus “straight” issue here, but a culturally embedded trauma that every boy faces in greater or lesser degrees. I like to characterize this as a cultural blood curse that’s passed down generationally until those men who have the good fortune to acquire some level of awareness derail its trajectory.

There are unavoidable rites of passage that every boy in this society must undergo. Whether these are introduced by unaware parents and primary caregivers, surely they’re introduced and reinforced on the nation’s playgrounds and schoolyards. Not every boy navigates these rites of passage with “success” – as success is measured in this society – and a boy fails these rites at his social and often physical peril. Unfortunately, “success” often results in a man’s inability to know and experience love, let alone express it to a woman - and surely not to other men.

I was unable to begin confronting the origins of rage and fear in my own life until well into the fifth decade of my life. Behaviors that enabled me to survive childhood and adolescent bullying no longer served me as an adult, resulting in two failed relationships, an inability to make and keep friends and the alienation of those around me. Only desperate loneliness impelled me to reach out for help. Reaching out for help is something men are taught from boyhood that they’re not to do. “Man up” and “cowboy up” are two of the watchwords for this. As Ehrmann says of his childhood experience, “Don’t feel. Don’t want. Don’t need.” Success - until that success leads to addictions, self-harm, social ruin and suicide.

Among other individuals and therapeutic modalities I can thank the programs of the Breakthrough Men’s Community, and not only for helping to shape new behaviors in me. Learning such new behaviors is crucial without a doubt in becoming a better spouse, lover, family member and friend to women. Concurrently I had to begin addressing the root unresolved traumas incurred in boyhood that made me hate myself. If a boy does not learn what is lovable about himself, his eventual hatred and self loathing will leave him incapable of truly loving others in the deepest and most satisfying ways – other women and other men. I would add for Daniel Pinchbeck’s benefit that also leaves a man incapable of loving the natural world of which he is part and leaves him open to becoming a climate crisis denier instead.

I believe that such programs as Breakthrough, initially crafted over years by Fred Jealous and drawing from the conceptual advances of feminism, should be models for the educational process of boys from an early age. It’s also the basis for a continuing community environment that reinforces and validates new behaviors.

Education and re-education of this kind that subverts the culture of patriarchy is also the basis of pulling men from the toxicity that grips the incels, Tates, Trumps and Musks of this world. This is a topic I’ll revisit often in my writing and visual art. I welcome your thoughts.

*For the uninitiated, the incel community is an online and offline subculture of men, predominantly young and self-identified as heterosexual who desire to attract women for sexual relations but are unable to do so. Because of their inability they express misogynistic hostility towards women, often in violent terms. Incel is an abbreviation for “involuntarily celibate”. The trend has existed since at least the 1990s, but has been more recently picked up as a cause by more generally aggrieved, entitled, radically conservative, and predominantly white men threatened by changing gender diversity and tolerance.

Twitter No More

After graduating in graphic design back in 2011 I opened a Twitter account, along with other social media like Instagram. I’ve heard that some creatives such as artists and writers found the social media useful professionally and for reaching a wider audience. Activists and ordinary citizens have also used it as a means of alternative communication in authoritarian countries where they reside. Sadly though, Twitter is also used as a vehicle for hate mongering and the spread of misinformation. I had difficulty warming up to it, never quite learning how to use it effectively. Pretty much neglecting my account in the past two years, I just returned in the last few weeks to promote my solo exhibit. But now, Musk. tRump. I appreciate the few who followed my account; but most of those will connect with me elsewhere and probably already do as I say, ‘Goodbye, Twitter’.

#givethebirdthebird

Amsterdam: My First Movie Review (WARNING: No spoilers, just opinion ahead)

Karen brought to my attention that she really wanted to see the movie Amsterdam. It was produced and directed by David O. Russell, with an ensemble cast led by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. The word “quirky” is sometimes used to describe some movies. “Quirky” appeals to me. The use of this word in movie reviews often intrigues me enough to suspend all judgment; so one evening last week we headed over to the neighborhood theatre to watch it.

If I feel movie reviews may bias my thinking I’ll abstain from reading them until after I’ve seen the movie; yet sometimes I read movie reviews beforehand, as I did with Amsterdam. Yes, the movie bombed at the box office. Yes, it’s lost the studio well over ninety-seven million. Well, I loved the movie, critics be damned.

I’ve learned over the years that reviews and box office popularity one way or the other do not guarantee for me either my enjoyment of a movie or my evaluation of its worth as art. This is especially true of movies reviewed by American audiences, which tend to favor “high concept” movies – i.e., movies that don’t have convoluted plots or require viewers to do too much intellectual heavy lifting.

The protagonists witness a murder, become suspects themselves and uncover a dastardly plot in attempting to clear their names. This is a common movie plot trope. Amsterdam is also characterized as a romantic comedy. I tend to dislike common tropes as tired and clichéd, and romantic comedies don’t usually interest me. Despite these misgivings I recognize that every genre of story has been done before. The creative aspect of writing, filming or even visual art such as mine is that the story that’s been told before has to be told again uniquely. I especially like it when they’re “quirky”.

Since teen years when I first took a course in cinema, I’ve been a movie buff from the standpoint of cinema as art form. I view as artists the actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, costumers, music composers, editors and most of the crews involved in making movies - some better or worse, but artists. I often check beforehand who’s involved in particular movies, including who’s producing. Movie production is a financial investment. Are the producers invested in making thoughtful, thought-provoking and beautiful art; or does does their track record bespeak of their simply wanting to make money off a blockbusting common denominator crowd-pleaser?

Since it is a box office bomb Amsterdam won’t be in the theatre much longer. It may be gone by the time I post this. I‘d recommend rushing out to see it before it’s gone, or surely have a view when it comes out on DVD or available to stream.

That’s it for my review of the movie itself - except for one last thing the reviewers I’ve read haven’t yet mentioned: this film set in the period between World War I and the 1930s has immediate political relevance that may lead me to dismiss its detractors as MAGA Republicans. Hint: it involves a plot to overthrow a legally elected president.

Robert De Niro’s character, U. S. Army veteran General Gill Dillenbeck, is based on the real-life U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler. During the end of the film Amsterdam, a clip of Dillenbeck speaking before the congressional committee is played alongside footage of Butler's actual testimony, revealing it to be the same speech.

(photo in the public domain)

Additionally though, in contrast to the Amsterdam movie we found enjoyable, we had another theater experience we found distasteful. Prior to the feature screening, our senses were assaulted by the most god-awful previews of movies to come, one loathsome trailer after another.

If you’re not into “quirky”, or convoluted plots that force you to pay attention to details, or thoughtful, thought-provoking acting by an ensemble cast; if on the contrary you’re into loud explosions, bullets flying, fists-slamming-into-faces action and over-the-top assaults on all your senses, then maybe you might want to see Violent Night, and you might want to pen a complaint about how you hated Amsterdam. Violent Night was followed by previews for John Wick (the fourth installment in the franchise), and the Super Mario Brothers movie.

In my Artist’s Statement I make the observation:

“Much of what passes for popular culture today is devoid of ideas. Digital technology has increasingly enabled spectacular sensual experiences of sight and sound in popular entertainment. Over successive generations this sensory bombardment contributes to inducing attention deficiency in large sectors of the population. Sensation without ideas over four decades contributes to numbing and dumbing down the population to intellectual shallowness - and often to emotional cruelty. Large sectors of the population become desensitized to the pathos of social injustice and to the hydra of existential threats facing our civilization and planet.”

In this context the arts and entertainment bandwagon I’m seeing artists jump on lately is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in creating visual art works. Stay tuned, as I’ll weigh in on this at some point soon.

By the way, Violent Night is being billed as a “Christmas fantasy black comedy action movie”. A team of mercenaries versus Santa Claus. I can’t imagine from the preview anyone bringing kids to see this when it’s released before Christmas. Well, on the other hand unfortunately I can.

The New emcanimator.com Website is Live!

Eleven years ago I first built and launched my website as an online portfolio to display my art. I was newly graduated from California State University Monterey Bay then, and the oldest geek in Information Technology and Communications Design’s class of 2011. My former CSUMB classes in web design served me well, enabling me to go beyond the first site I built in Yahoo! Geocities. (Does anyone remember Geocities? This was back in time before Content Management Systems, back when building and maintaining websites was still fun for me.)

Using the WordPress CMS I pretty much on my own built and maintained that original website over the next decade. My 2011 site was hosted by Monterey Bay Design, the web design and development company run by the talented Deborah Ryder. A lot of proverbial water has passed under the bridge since then, in history, technology, social culture - and in professional and personal life. One thing I was never able to do in that time was to configure my site for e-commerce. But the time had come for that to change, and I needed help. There was a lot of “back end” work to be done that was way beyond my capabilities; and frankly, for me that kind of stuff wasn’t fun any longer. I’d rather be making art - and promoting my art to those who might want to see it hanging on their walls (well, that ‘promoting’ bit’s another story…)

Building an e-commerce enabled website doesn’t come cheaply. It wasn’t an easy decision for one like me who had sworn to quit day jobs forever and strike out on my own as an independent fine artist. But I decided not so much to spend money as to invest in the future of E. M. Corpus Graphic and Fine Art. I was confident in the steady and reliable service of a decade with Monterey Bay Design. Deborah was sensitive to my professional needs and financial constraints - and she’s highly competent in what she does.

We started at the end of July 2022, then worked through most of August. My painting time at the easel languished during this period. While Deborah did her magic, I was busy re-sizing and uploading high resolution images, tweaking texts, wrangling with new web hosting, print-on-demand and financial services, and on and on. If you need a web designer and developer, Deborah’s the one to see at Monterey Bay Design.

Well, it’s here. As of Thursday the new emcanimator.com is up-and-running: The site is fully ADA compliant, and its enhanced data and privacy security meets all U.S. and EU standards. I can easily (and I promise more frequently) post opinionated rants on my blog and respond to your comments. You can safely and securely purchase fine art works online, and through an interface with Fine Art America order a wide variety of prints. You can sign up for the Art of Subversive Dreams newsletter, and although I’d love for you to speak to me directly, you can can always send me a message from the site.

So, what do you think?

Karen Warwick Art at The Cherry

Several of my friends and fellow artists are participating in the "Face It: Artists' Portraits" exhibit at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, located at 4th and Guadalupe in Carmel-By-the-Sea, California.

My dear wife and closest collaborator Karen Warwick is participating there also with her  painting Song of Artemis. If you're unable to visit the Monterey Bay area, you can view the exhibit online at the link above. Please visit Karen's website to view her other work.

The Cherry is open Wednesday to Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Saturday 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm. I hope you'll get to see them all. The "Face It" exhibit runs through Saturday, February 19, 2022. A closing reception is scheduled for between 1 and 3 PM. Come and meet the exhibit artists; and I'll be there, too.

What's Up For 2022?

Christmas 2021 has come and gone; and 2022 is a few days away. Here’s a preview of upcoming changes.

This E. M. Corpus Graphic and Fine Arts website that I initiated nearly a decade ago is now long-in-the-tooth. Ten years. Can you believe that? I can hardly myself. The website is due for a major overhaul on both the front and back ends.

The “front end” is what you see on your screen, the images you see, the buttons and links you click. The “back end” is all the coding that makes things happen when you click. It’s been a long time since I did back end web design. I’ve concentrated on developing my skills in visual art. My back end design skills haven’t kept up; so I’m going to leave that stuff to my excellent web services provider at Monterey Bay Design.

As I stated in my previous post, I’ll be actively blogging more than ever. Art follows life – and vice versa. At least that’s a goal of culturally subversive art – to influence everyday life towards the sublime and self-aware. I’ll be documenting the day-to-day downsides to the creative life, as well as the upsides. No ivory towers to this artist’s life: I’m affected by Covid-19, climate change, weather, environment, economic and political foolery as much as anyone else. I’m also inspired and awed by the beauty around me living on the California central coast. Either way, the writing could get raw and personal -- as it should.

Also as stated previously, awkward as it is to market both fine art and graphic art together, I’ll be doing just that as well as combining the visual image with the written word. Perhaps I’ll create another website gallery for my graphic output. Perhaps I’ll consolidate the galleries I have now.

With a larger studio space in 2021 I began to paint larger works than I was able previously. I’ll have a solo gallery exhibition in November 2022. While that may seem nearly another year away for most, for me this means producing more large work to fill that gallery, starting well before yesterday.

Finally, I need to actively search for new venues for the kind of art I produce that may not fit in well with the landscapes and seascapes this area is known for. Will 2022 be a bust-out year for me professionally and commercially? I have positive expectations.

Anyone out that there have ideas on these? I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below or drop me a line.

"Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality)" a Winner!

Hey guys, I'm very pleased to announce that my acrylic painting Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality) was Second-Place Winner in the two-dimensional art category of the Walter Lee Avery Gallery 2021 Fall Adult Competition.

I received the award from the Mayor of the City of Seaside, Ian Oglesby, and Seaside Art Commissioner, Sandra Gray, in Seaside City Hall's Council Chambers this past Friday, October 8th at well-attended reception.

I'm grateful to the Seaside Art Commission, Francoise Avery, Sandra Gray and her crew for their outstanding curating of the exhibit and organizing the reception.

Black Lives Matter: Justice for George Floyd

This is a 5x7 portrait in watercolor of a human being. His name is George Floyd.

Since I was fifteen (now sixty-six years older) I've dedicated my entire creative life towards social justice. I haven't always succeeded. Every portrait I've ever painted has in some way big or small touched on social justice.

As I've stated in earlier posts, I'm in the process of painting portraits of authors I'm reading as I write my own memoir. But those can wait.

Showing that I recognize that a beautiful life had his breath extinguished, and that injustice has stood for too long -- that can't wait. Black lives matter, and I stand in solidarity.

I'm waiving my copyright on this image so that anyone who would like to have it on posters, flyers and literature to use in activities of social justice may do so. I only ask that when possible to credit this artist. Thank you.

#georgefloyd #blacklivesmatter #blm

Belle Foundation Grant

With gratitude I'm extremely pleased to announce that I'm the recipient of a 2019 Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

"You have been chosen for this award as an artist who is genuinely committed to his work, and as someone who demonstrates significant potential for continued growth and accomplishment.

"The Individual Grants Program of the Belle Foundation was designed to recognize people like you, who exhibit exceptional talent and potential for achievement in the arts and humanities."

Again, my appreciation to Allysa Byrkit and the Board of Directors of the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

KRONOS is home

After five-and-a-half months at The Dalí Expo (now History & Art Museum: Salvador Dalí), this past Monday, Karen and I brought KRONOS back home.

KRONOS was the interactive art installation envisioned by my wife and creative partner, Karen Warwick (warwickartandbooks.com), which we had constructed jointly over several months for her month-long solo exhibition at The Dalí Expo during August 2019.

Visitors from around the world posted many positive comments regarding the KRONOS exhibit. We’re grateful to the management of The Dalí Expo, who liked it well enough to make the decision to relocate it to in their lobby bookstore and keep it on display and freely open to the public another four months past the closing of Karen’s solo.

Public interactive participation garnered uniformly positive responses. Often visitors stood in line with their kids waiting to give it a spin.

We did not originally envision during our construction of KRONOS that it would be on daily display for so long, subject to interaction by the public. However, it stood up to the daily pounding to our delight and surprise.

We are now seeking grants to upgrade the KRONOS installation or rebirth it in more robust forms in other art venues.

Portrait of Konrad Heiden and the Threat of American Fascism

I think of myself as a “cultural subversive” artist. My hope and expectation is to contribute through my art and writing to changing the culture of inequality embodied in the patriarchal paradigm. Until late 2018 my personal style had been ironic but low-key, not prone to bold statements. I realize now that subtle and sublime may not be enough.

Two of my pastel paintings, Portrait of Konrad Heiden and Pretty in Pink, mark my departure from subtlety. The 2016 election of a con man and misogynist boor to the U.S. presidency was, I perceived, a political threat to democracy here and around the world. It was the stimulus for my departure from subtle.

Now more than ever, it’s apropos to provide some background to Portrait of Konrad Heiden, even more so in the context of last week’s historic impeachment of the would-be dictator.

Who was Konrad Heiden?

My ostensible subject was a German-American journalist and historian. He witnessed and documented first hand in the 1920s and 30s the rise in Germany of the charismatic if brutish Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. (I say “ostensible” subject; but the true subject of the best artwork is a dialogue between the mind of the artist and that of the viewer.)

Konrad Heiden documented how the cynical pragmatism of bankers, military and civic leaders sought to use Hitler and his army of street thugs in uniform, but contain him -- and how this backfired upon the world.

In the wake of the bloody consolidation of Nazi power in 1933, Heiden fled into exile to various hideouts in Germany, Switzerland and France. He was captured and imprisoned briefly, but managed to escape to the United States with the aid of the International Rescue Committee.

In 1944, Heiden published the epic biography Der Fuhrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, a book I first read in 1971 as a teen art student attending the LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts in New York City. Sadly, Heiden’s work is even more relevant today.

The Portrait of Konrad Heiden

This painting is dominantly dark monochrome pastel and pastel pencil, except for the spare use of color in the partial face  of Heiden, who looks directly at the viewer. An enraged if cartoonish demagogue harangues a Congressional audience presided over by an applauding Vice President and Speaker of the House, a reference to Trump’s joint address to Congress in 2017.

The section below it was adapted from a historical photograph of Adolph Hitler addressing the German parliament or Reichstag in 1933, its members uniformly acknowledging him with the Nazi salute.

What does my painting have to do with Congressional matters, and what am I attempting to address? Fascism, moral cowardice, hypocrisy, short-sighted opportunism, in a few words. These words apply not only in the repugnant remnants of the Republican Party members of Congress who have forsaken any semblance of belief in Constitutional law, but sadly also in the existence of a so-called “base” of die-hard Trump supporters who have lost their sense of moral compass.

Fascism in America 

Although the vulgar antics of Donald Trump gives high-profile encouragement to proto-fascist movements in this country and elsewhere, I must emphasize that the tragedy lies not so much in Trump himself. No, the actual tragic and frightening parallels are between the ordinary citizens of Germany who explicitly or tacitly supported Hitler in the 20s and 30s, and the legislators and ordinary citizens who continue to support Donald Trump and his administration today.

Trump is not the problem, but the ultimate putrescent symptom of the problems initiated by corporate greed and the fraud of so-called “trickle down” economics perpetrated over decades now.

For over forty years the American people have been stressed economically and socially like frogs simmering in a pot -- and continue to be stressed in ways analogous to the German people stressed by the horrors of World War I and the aftereffects of the Versailles Treaty reparations policies. While individual historical details differ, the common threads between the two historical periods are fear and the debasement of moral conscience – great masses of the population in fear for their precarious livelihoods and communities due to imbalance in the concentration of wealth, and demagogues who play upon those fears and scapegoat an “Other” as the source of what people fear. In Germany, the "Other" was Jews, communists, Slavs, homosexuals, the mentally disabled… Today, the "Other" are immigrants, foreigners of skin colors other than white, persons of differing gender orientations and increasingly, simply those who have differing views on what it means to be equal.

In 2016 I witnessed this – and as an immigrant and person of color expressed my horror of it – when a Trump campaign rally spit in the face of the face of a Latino man, and no one there – surely not Trump – spoke out against it in the name of decency. Moral obscenities have only piled on since the election within government and outside of it.

We are closer now to fascism in America than ever before – authoritarian misuse of government, an economy of massive inequality, armed extremists emboldened by the sanction of presidential indecency and ordinary citizens having legitimate anger at their displacement channeled into support of an orange-headed walking colostomy bag of lies.

While in the history of the United States there have been fascist movements and fascist sympathizers before in low and high places, they did not have the military-industrial-information complex technology and mass social media resources that exists today. Now as then, cynical pragmatism in the halls of industry, government and religion believe Trumpism can be controlled and used to ends they believe benefit them, the ends justifying the means.

With a Republican-dominated Senate that acts in lockstep with Trump’s administration, the system of executive-legislative-judicial checks-and-balances is failing in ways that could not be imagined by the founding fathers as they first conceived that component of a constitutional democracy.

At the risk of belaboring the point, Trump is not the problem but the uglified symptom of the long-festering systemic problem of patriarchal inequality that is the parent of inequalities. Yes -- he must be removed from office immediately lest the United States as a constitutional democracy goes down, taking the world with it; but if Trump were simply to disappear from politics today, the forces that created Trump, the spineless politicians and the populace who believed in him would still exist. Fear, hatred and the socio-economic environment in which these breed still exist. That’s my challenge as a creative. That’s our challenge in the period ahead.

Heiden’s Der Fuhrer ends in 1934 with Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, followed by the contrived burning of the German parliament – the Reichstag Fire – which Hitler and his administration used to murder his opposition in the Night of the Long Knives and impose blood-drenched rule on Germany. America itself has acquiesced to fear of the Other before: witness the incarceration of Japanese-Americans at the outbreak of World War II and the Patriot Act after 9/11. The rest is history.

The Shape Of Things To Come

With Portrait of Konrad Heiden (and its companion piece Pretty In Pink) I want to invoke a remembrance of the past with the hopes that we as a nation “are not condemned to repeat it”, in the words of the philosopher and poet George Santayana. Yes, I would have preferred to convey my thoughts in subtle visual metaphor; but we live in unsubtle times. 2019 has been for me a year of struggling with personal changes. When the spirit and conscience move me, my ironic images will be more iron-fisted in their delivery in 2020 going forward.

Escaping the Insanity of Things or How To Find Serenity In Moving Experiences

The house in Seaside, California had been my mother’s home for three decades – and for more than the past twelve years my permanent residence and artist studio. I had vowed that while my elderly mother was still alive, it would never be sold nor lien placed upon it ; but now, Ma is gone.

Karen, my fiancée, is also an artist, and at the start of this year 2019 I moved from Seaside to the nearby town in which she lived, to start a new life with her as a full-time artist and writer. Two months prior to that, I quit my day job – hopefully done with day jobs forever.

The forty-five-year-old house in Seaside was in a state of disrepair, but I didn’t have the financial means to upgrade it. Much of its more than sixteen hundred square feet was dirty and filled with clutter. We met with a realtor to discuss a rapid sale of the Seaside house -- “as is”. With a speed that left us breathless, three weeks later we closed escrow.

In those three weeks, we sold, donated or moved to storage a number of items from the thirty years of accumulated THINGS. In the final week, movers came and hauled away tons of old furniture. Yet, closing day had finally come, and even with all furniture gone, sixteen hundred square feet was still littered with boxes, thousands of books and bags of trash -- tons of THINGS that physically could not be moved into Karen’s -- a house less than half the size.

The buyer had agreed to postpone closing for a week. That week at the end of March had come and gone, and he would budge no further. Midnight was the rock bottom deadline to be off the property that was no longer mine, a property that was to be empty – totally empty -- of all my THINGS.

After a night filled with fitful sleep and chaotic dreams, early that morning I sat with Karen at her kitchen table. “You can’t argue with the physics of space and time,” I said. There were too many things – too many to bring to our small home, too much to put in our limited storage rental, no time left to sort, pack and move it all. We were overwhelmed with THINGS.

A huge portion of those things would have to be trashed. How did this feel? It would be the equivalent of taking possessions – thousands of books, objects that had belonged to my parents and me and accumulated over thirty years – dumping them in the back yard, pouring gasoline over them and setting them on fire. If we were to pull off this caper by midnight, that is what I resolved to do. 

I’ll deviate now from my narrative to speak of what this writing is really about.

I want to speak on the subject of things: Attachment to THINGS, the memories they represent, grief that comes with loss, whether the loss be of loved ones, relationships, jobs or money, but specifically on the loss of THINGS to which we’ve become attached.

The bank account into which the money from the sale was to be deposited didn’t even exist until two days prior to closing. For the purpose of this writing, I can’t go into the complexities involved into why this was so, but even the money from the sale was a THING to be reckoned with.

What should have been our delight at our newfound income was marred by anxiety. We were anxious that our inability to fulfill the buyer’s demand that to vacate a totally emptied house would cause the deal to all come apart and come to naught.

The image that came to my mind was of Sisyphus, the arrogant king condemned to forever roll a prodigious rock up a steep mountainside, only to have it repeatedly and forever come crashing back down. To my mind, the attachment THINGS is our rocks; and our obsession with things is our own self-condemnation to roll them.

The world appears full of suffering, yet that suffering is caused by want, by desiring. For far too many in this world, the want is of dire need for the means basic survival, of food and of shelter. For others of privilege, want is simply to have – to have THINGS and to have the means to control THINGS. Somewhere I had heard that in certain cultures desiring more than what one needs is the definition of insanity.

So many of the things my parents and I accumulated over thirty years in fact were no longer needed for any practical purpose. Perhaps many of the items were never needed, either from the baseline standpoint of survival or even comfort. Articles of clothing I hadn’t worn for years; books I was unlikely to read again, if at all; objects purchased in the past that had no relevance to the present day; items that took up space, and could not be transported from a larger space to a space not even half as big.

Why then was it so hard to simply let go of unnecessary THINGS?

For me, and perhaps for many other people, things were not only “things” as objects, but memories – memories of the human interactions and events associated with the things at the point of their acquisition and use, such as at a younger, earlier time in my life or particularly memorable happy times.

How was I to let go? For one thing, by coming to recognize and express gratitude for what I had, instead of what I didn’t have; what I had gained in the quality of my life, and not the objects I was to lose.

I will also speak of my belief in a safe and loving universe. I want to believe -- and choose to believe -- in a universe that wants us all to succeed in the best terms of success; and that if we ask – individually and en masse – our success will be granted in proportion to our expectations that it will. We create our reality. I believe that the only “rule” is that my asking will not be at the expense of or harm to anyone else.

Likely, this belief of mine will be met with disbelief in my naiveté. Surely, a random scan of the daily news filled with examples of greed should disabuse me of that belief, no? Admittedly, my faith is tested often, and often for days and weeks on end.

I offer no proof of my assertion that the universe is loving and safe. I can only present my personal experience where the gods or the universe opened and responded to my need, my committed resolve, hard work and most importantly my positive expectations, manifested in events lined up and people coming through with kindness and good will in my behalf.

In The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, the mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray asserted in a statement often misattributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.”

Be grateful in what you have all around you, and you get what you need. I believe that the truth of this has been borne out for me on a number of occasions.

POSTSCRIPT:

In the days and weeks during and following my move from bigger-to-smaller and more-to-less, and in the context of current political and economic events I reflected on the suffering that results from the lust for things and for the control of things. From this reflection came the inspiration to paint King Sisyphus In the Underworld.

In Memoriam: Bruno "Pete" Peters

In July a great man departed this mortal time and space, and left the company of devoted family and friends. He passed on just eight weeks short of his one-hundred-first birthday. I considered him a dear friend, and during the all-too-brief time I knew him he allowed me the privilege of rendering two portraits his likeness. I would like to honor his memory in this post.

He was Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Peters, U.S. Army Air Corps, (Ret). I met him and his wife Patti in 2004, through their daughter, my friend Mohini Wendy Peters.

Pete and Patti were always warm and welcoming to me from the day I met them in Torrance, California. When I first spoke with Patti and referred to her husband as “Mr. Peters”, she immediately corrected me, “Pete”. Since then I always felt welcome in their presence.

The portraits portray him at stages in his life exactly seventy years apart.

In The Quiet Man (1) I envisioned him as the twenty-seven year old fighter pilot, Captain Bruno Peters, flight leader of 355th Squadron.

In The Quiet Man (2), he’s just Pete as I knew him, still blowing notes on his saxophone. I painted this as a gift for his ninety-seventh birthday.

He flew (and crashed) all kinds of fighter aircraft during World War II, and piloted transport planes during the Korean War.

However, he was most renowned as an aviator with the 354th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force -- the Pioneer Mustangs, the first unit to fly the renowned North American P-51, in both their B and D models.

I was privileged to attend a couple of veterans’ reunions of the 354th. It was obvious that he was held in high regard by everyone, as a pilot and as a man.

Although much has been said and written about his heroism as an aviator – all of it well-deserved -- I was always most impressed by his humility.

During the time I was taking night classes while working full time, I was assigned the writing of an essay and then to speak about its topic before a live audience. My choice of topic then was what’s been referred to as “The Greatest Generation”. This included interviews with Pete regarding his WWII experiences. He was reluctant to make much of them. To him, he was just doing his job. He seemed to have more enjoyment recounting the times he had crashed various of his planes in non-combat situations, than recounting experiences in actual combat.

I loved his saying that “all I ever wanted to do was fly airplanes and play in the band”.

I've excerpted portions of his obituary below:

"...Bruno was born on September 12, 1917 in Minneapolis, MN, to Bernice Dabravalskiai and Alexander Petraitis. Bruno was the oldest of five children. His father and mother emigrated from Lithuania, in 1906 and 1913, respectively. The family settled in the Detroit, Michigan area where Alexander worked for Ford Motor Company. Bruno became an accomplished violin musician at an early age and often performed with his father at Lithuanian celebrations. Bruno left home at the age of 14, and graduated from High School in Royal Oak, Michigan.He joined the Army Air Corp during World War II. He flew more than 100 missions in the P51 Mustang, out of England and France with the Pioneer Mustang Group. Most of his missions involved escorting bombers to and from their targets. He is credited for downing one of the first German jets, the ME262. During the war, he took up the saxophone, which he played for most of his life. After the war he continued his career in the Air Force and retired as Lt. Colonel in 1968.Bruno met and married Patti Helen Ruth Moore (April 29, 1926 – July 29, 2010) on August 22, 1944. Due to his career in the Air Force, the family moved all over the United States, and also lived in France for 3 years. After retiring from the Air Force, Bruno and Patti settled in Phoenix, AZ where he worked for the Gannett Newspaper. During that time, Bruno and Patti enjoyed antiquing together, and acquired hundreds of collectables. Bruno led the Pete Peters Swing Band, playing for special events and for fun. He and Patti enjoyed traveling and went to many reunions of the 354th Fighter Pilot Group.In 1997 they moved to Torrance, California. Shortly after the death of his wife Patti, in 2010, Bruno bought a home in Santa Cruz where he lived with his daughter, Wendy, until his death..."

The photo below is from last September, 2017 when we celebrated him at his 100th birthday.

Photo Courtesy of Ken Peters

The obituary credits him with shooting down an ME262A. However, it's probable that he actually took down a second, an ME262-1, though it was not officially confirmed. His wingman, Lt. Ralph Delgado took down a third -- totaling three ME262s in the area of Fulda and south of Kassel region of central Germany.

There are many books on the exploits of the Pioneer Mustangs, which were the first to fly the P-51D, the bubble canopy Mustang that had the engine power and fuel capacity to escort and defend bombers all the way to the Third Reich’s territory. The acclaimed Redtails of the 332nd Fighter Group -- the Tuskegee Airmen -- were P-51Ds as well.

The most succinct and inexpensive book I'd recommend to the casual reader is An Ordinary Day in 1945, by Peter Kǎǎsák. With photos and illustrations it tells of all the action seen by the 8th and 9th Air Force during one day, March 2, 1945. That was the day that Capt. Peters and his wingman Lt. Delgado took down the ME262s. (Barely six months later, Bruno would marry his beloved Patti.) A Google search on "Bruno Peters" would produce many excerpts on him, and more vintage fighter pilot photos as well. You can see Bruno Peters and hear him speak on a YouTube video from a series on the 354th FG. Even as he speaks of his experiences, his humility and self-deprecating humor are clearly evident.

His memorial was held this July 28th, 2018, which I attended. I spoke of him fondly as I do now, but it was difficult holding it all in. In the early evening, we boarded a whale-watching boat out of Capitola for his burial at sea amidst the dolphins. Mohini’s brother Ken released into the waves an eco-friendly urn in the shape of a sea turtle containing Bruno's ashes and those of his wife Patti. We cast yellow roses in the wake.

There’s much more -- a whole lot more that could be said about him – his quiet valor, kindness and wry humor… It’s certain many will speak of him for some time to come. In closing, though, I’d include in my personal remembrance his big-hearted generosity.

"Father and Children" Watercolor Process Video

Now, more than ever, we need examples and models of sensitive, nurturing good men to contradict the culture of patriarchy. I created a watercolor painting to celebrate kind and aware fathers, and the children they help raise as the hope of our civilization.

This process video was the first that I ever created for Instagram; and the first video I've created in a long time of any kind. 37 seconds of footage literally took me all day to composite. As I get better at it there will be more created, of better quality and appearing faster and more regularly. (Created 4/22/2018)