Art Spirit Village is a sanctuary, a state of mind that exists within all who are compelled to express themselves through art. Michael Scott’s Art Spirit Village is my own safe haven. Here, I am the Butcher, the Baker, The Candlestick Maker and I suppose I am the Mayor as well. This is where I will share my Artistic Transformation, my imagination and my art work, hoping to somehow inspire others to do the same.
I invite YOU to drop in for a visit, stay for a while and come back as often as you wish (PLEASE SUBSCRIBE-It is easy and FREE). Art Spirit Village has an open door policy. It is my hope and intent that the creative world will beat a path to the doorway of Art Spirit Village. Comments, Correspondence and Guest Posts are highly encouraged as long as they support the themes of Imagination, Inspiration and Transformation.
“Life on this earth may be likened to a great kaleidoscope before which the scenes and facts and material substances are ever shifting and changing, and all anyone can do is to take these facts and substances and rearrange them in new combinations” ~ Napoleon Hill
In the words of King Solomon, “There is nothing new under the sun”. I suppose the same could be said of the moon. I am not the first artist in the world to be mesmerized by the mystical beauty of a moonlit night and I’m certainly not the first person to have the urge to paint such a scene. I’m also not the first person to paint a tree, a skier or a log cabin. If I can take any credit at all for the originality of my work it is due to the combination of subjects that come from an inner place of “feeling” or from my imagination.
The dictionary defines Imagination as “The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses”. This is not to say that a painter of realism who uses reference does not use his or her imagination, not at all for the process of converting that reality to the canvas demands an imaginative mind. For me, I am finding that when I free myself from reference material as much as possible, I give my imagination or my ability to “feel” the greatest opportunity to perform.
If you watch the video posted above, you will see that this painting was totally ad lib. The only reference material used were sketches of skiers that I created with my imagination. As the composition was laid out on the canvas I put in the shape of a pond on which I was going to place ice skaters. As work on the painting progressed, the work started talking to me and it said “forget the pond, go with skiers”, so I did.
A near perfect June morning rises from the east and the sounds of the forest are alive and happy. The absence of wind is welcome and in the stillness, the smoke from wildfires two states away has settled in, throwing hues of magenta into the atmosphere. The warmth of the early summer sun is laced softly on the left side of my face and body and I sit quietly in my favorite chair, sipping coffee and soaking up the peacefulness of the moment. This is how I’d prefer to start every day.
For most of us, life becomes so busy and cluttered with responsibilities and worry and noise that we forget to make the time to find peace in the beauty of a moment like this. How different would life be if each and every day we made it a priority to free our minds of the clutter, if even for just a few minutes yielding to the simple side of living, no matter where we are?
Tammy and I have accumulated a great deal of video footage over the course of the last few years while visiting my parents on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. After each visit, we unpack the bags and download the footage into the abyss of the digital archives, and we get busy again with our lives in Colorado. This past week, I finally made the time to pull together some of my favorite images and set them to music for a video Birthday card for my Dad. I was so inspired by the power of that video, that I took another step and put together this five minute video for myself and anyone else who takes the time to watch it. It is for me, a quick meditative escape to simplicity, peace and beauty and I hope it is for you as well.
Memorial Day Weekend is upon us and in less than a month the days will begin to get shorter (bite my tongue). It seems contrary to logic that here at 10,000 feet in the mountains of Southern Colorado Spring has barely sprung and that when summer finally arrives, it will stay for 8 or 10 glorious weeks. Up here, a person forgets how alive the forest becomes in the summer. The sound of the breeze pushing it’s way through the aspen leaves, the singing and the humming of the birds, the sound of rushing water, the scent of the grass and the flowers, the shape and texture of the clouds and the warmth of the sun are all things forgotten that must be remembered as if they are being discovered for the first time.
For an oil painter, the contrast of the seasons here is a double-edged sword. So lucky am I to have a new inspiration for subject matter every few months but to paint with the seasons means to change the colors in the palette almost constantly. For the last few months Titanium White, Payne’s Grey and Coeruleum Blue have been the staples of my work and I have so thoroughly enjoyed painting the tones of full moon winter night scenes. I may paint a few more of them in the next week or two but I know that I will not be able to resist expressing the feeling of summer any longer than that.
There are people from all walks of life that have great ideas and great talent but fail to have the drive and determination to put those virtues into action. La Veta Artist Joan Hanley is definitely not one of those people.
Just over a year ago, Joan was inspired by the incredible story of Doris Tracy and today the ambitious project to build a monument for the local hero is nearing completion. It was on a wing and a prayer that Doris jumped into a flight suite during WWII and on a wing and a prayer that Joan began sculpting an ideology, that “dreams can come true”.
Doris Tracy was one of only 1000 or so women who served in the war as Women Air-Force Service Pilots (W.A.S.P.). Tracy, along with the other W.A.S.P.’s, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal shortly before her death last year. Joan’s life-sized monument will be located next to the museum and library in Doris’ hometown, La Veta, Colorado.
Joan is not new to sculpture and the art of building monuments. Decades of experience precede this project and from that experience she decided to involve experts, each step of the way. Recently, Joan employed Carla Knight of Loveland Colorado to produce the mold for the project. Carla is the master mold maker who made the mold Glenna Goodacre’s Vietnam Women’s Memorial located in Washington D.C.
Tammy an I became engaged in Joan’s project when local real estate broker Eric Bachman (discoverbachman.com) hired us to do a local interest video for his website. With that video, the door was opened and we were hired by Joan to produce the video shown above to raise awareness of the project and to assist her with her money raising efforts. I hope that you will take the time to watch the short video and pass this post on to anyone who may be willing and able to make a tax deductible contribution to help pay for this worthy cause.
In 2007, I picked up a book titled “The Artists’s Way” by Julia Cameron that changed my life in two ways. First, Julia’s “Morning Pages” concept sowed the seed within me that has now become a habit of daily journaling. Second, Julia’s suggestion that one makes time for “Artist Dates” also took hold over the course of time. At first I scoffed a bit at the idea of going out and spending time with Me doing whatever I desired so that I might be inspired. After all, I had a family, responsibilities and a job and those things had always sat higher on the Totem Pole than my self-indulgent desire for creative inspiration. I now realize that my family and my “job” are dependent upon my inspiration.
Artist Field Trips are now so much a part of my life that they often occur without planning or intention, they just happen. That painting that inspired me so while Tammy and I walked around in the streets of Key West, that sunrise over North Lake last winter when the sound of cracking ice echoed through the frozen air and then the summer day when I captured video in the spectacular mountains of Southern Colorado, those are the Artist Field Trips that shape who I am.
