Mitchell Pluto

Omnivoyant Eye Theo Ellsworth

How do you put yourself into a trance or into a place that’s receptive to the subconsciousness?

I find the act of drawing in itself to be trance inducing. I first became obsessed with automatic drawing in high school because it felt like it would light up my brain and smooth out all of my anxious energy. It would literally feel like I was drawing my way out of a stupor and waking up to the strangeness of my own mind.

Drawing helps me reach that valuable state where I can feel awake and alert, yet simultaneously relaxed. I find that my breathing slows down when I’m drawing and time feels more fluid. It helps to have a quiet studio where I can go and disappear for hours at a time. I think of the imagination as a living thing that I have an ever evolving relationship with. If I meet it halfway and submerse myself in the creative process, I get to interact with and explore the subconscious and come back with artistic documentation.

What interests inform and inspire you?

So many things. I love outsider, folk, visionary, and ancient art. Whenever art is made from an inner need or impulse, I find it extremely valuable. I love children’s art. I have 2 kids and love watching the way their minds work. I love creative collaboration as a way to relate to another person’s mind and bring out something totally unexpected and new.

I’m interested in neuroscience and new scientific thought around the so called Hard Problem of Consciousness and Theories of Everything. I love to read. Especially speculative fiction, strange fiction, and comics. I’m hugely inspired by nature and spend a lot of time in the woods. Learning some carpentry skills is another thing that’s been opening me up to new art possibilities. Just sitting and trying to clearly see images or hear music in my head is an ongoing practice.

What role do you think the artist has in the 21st century?

The best thing an artist can do is follow their own unique impulse. Artists need to push back against the bizarre human drive to homogenize everything. They need to reach beyond the inadequate systems we live inside.

I think diversity of culture and human expression is the most valuable thing we can cultivate as a species. I also think it’s important for artists to have an anti-cruelty stance. There’s so much cruelty in our history and baked into our systems. I think the artist’s role is to look unflinchingly at this and attempt to untie those knots. Art can be part of the antidote to the bad ideas that seem to cling to our brains and stunt our evolution.

Have you experienced Lucid Dreaming or any kind of encounter with cosmic consciousness?

Yes, I’ve had quite a few experiences that have felt outside of normal cognitive experience. Each of these experiences feel incredibly valuable to me and I’m thankful for them. Mostly I’ve regretted it whenever I’ve tried to describe them to people. They feel like something to internalize and hold close. It’s easy to discount things that don’t fit with the narrative of the everyday, so I try to think about those experiences a lot and not let them fade into doubt.

When did you create or discover your own archetypical patterns?

I started with automatic drawing, just letting my hand draw without knowing where it would go. Through that, a lot of patterns and imagery naturally began to emerge and I would just kind of follow that. Through years of working in this way and contemplating the recurring symbols, a lot of ideas and feelings started taking shape. Making comics became a way to explore that more actively by trying to unlock the stories and concepts that my drawings were revealing to me.

Has your work ever lead you to an experience of intuition or synchronicity?

Following an artistic impulse is in itself an intuitive and synchronistic experience. It adds an extra dimension to my daily life and when I have positive momentum in my work, I feel like that crosses over into my daily life and helps me see connections and meaning. Putting my work out into the world has also allowed me to meet a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, so in that way, I feel like dedicating myself to making art has allowed me to have important friendships that have inspired and helped me grow.

What do you like to cook?

I love cooking. I cook almost every night. I like to make enchiladas with sauce made from scratch. I like making sushi, jambalaya, grilled pizza, salmon. It’s just fun to work a kitchen and try to be efficient with all the different elements in play and it’s satisfying to serve up something good to my family. Cleaning up the kitchen afterwards is not as fun.

Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Montana. His previously published comics include Capacity, The Understanding Monster, Sleeper Car, and An Exorcism. The New York Times once called his work, Imagination at firehose intensity. He has been the recipient of the Lynd Ward Honor Book Prize and an Artist Innovation Award. He loves creative collaboration, cooking, and making family folk art with his kids. He is constantly making invisible performance art in his head that no one will ever see.

more info and books by Theo Ellsworth

_{Interview by Mitchell Pluto from SULΦUR surrealist jungle archive 15 OCT 2021}

Gerald Stone Mysteries

Gerald Stone’s roots flow from 1/2 Seminole and 1/8 Cherokee tribes: These worlds are, out of time, landscapes within landscapes, tribes, spirits, watchers, seekers, giants, red-haired women, murdered and missing, space stretched and bent, stories vibrating across time.

From a show at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento a write-up describes Gerald Stone as a “beloved local master artist”. Gerald himself just brushed off the accolades and calls his work “weird”. His stylized art, which he describes as a conversation between himself and his Creator, bridges traditional and contemporary styles and themes.

1947 Born in the far reaches of rural Oklahoma, Stone was a kid who liked to draw and has lived a life of peaks and valleys, always around the midline of art. Just 3 days before he was scheduled to enlist in the Army, headed most likely to Vietnam, he was accepted for a 2 year post graduated program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, a city often considered the center of the Native American art world.

In 2009 Gerald Stone finally had the successful solo exhibition. He now shows in only a few galleries and also sells from his home.

_{edited by Mitchell Pluto from SULΦUR surrealist jungle}_{archive 29 OCT 2021}

The Enigmatic Paintings Jim Denomie

In the painting Vision Quest-Spiritual Sex there are several metaphors relating to antlers. Are there more details you can provide us to inform our understanding?

In one of my earliest painting classes we were instructed to create a composition, painting with a live male model, using some of the still life objects on the stage with him, and, our imagination. One of the objects was an antlered deer skull and in my painting, it replaced the model’s head. This was not an unfamiliar concept in Native American imagery but it was the first time for me to play with this concept. It definitely placed me into a spiritual realm I was not intending to explore. But I am a spiritual person so it felt okay to me to proceed. For me, antlered people represent spiritual people. But this antlered man was nude (as the male model was) and displayed a penis. Now this was certainly not a familiar concept in Native American imagery. It has been a concept that has developed and evolved over the years in my art recently culminating with these new paintings, “The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex” (I and II) and “Vision Quest-Spiritual Sex.”

The painting Spiritual Nite expresses a nude female figure and an enigmatic figure emerging out of the woods. What hint could you give viewers to add their interpretation or apprehension?

The painting “Spiritual Nite (Beautiful Witch)” has evolved from a series of paintings of female nudes over the last twenty years that have evoked a spiritual content. I have met several witches in my life (one a former lover) and made a decision to name this evolving series Beautiful Witches. In this particular painting (and others in this series) I am working intuitively with no planned outcome. I usually start with a sketch of the figure and then develop content and background imagery right at the easel, often letting color and brushstroke inform the direction and meaning of the painting.

Mother or Beautiful Witch transmits a sense of being fed but who are the mysterious figures behind her?

The painting “Mother (Beautiful Witch)” is an example of an idea evolving right in front of me. Originally, this painting started out a year earlier as a portrait of a tattooed woman with semi formal abstractions in the background. It had an interesting beginning but after awhile it felt lost and I changed direction in midstream. I painted over the background and the entire body of the figure while at the same time changing the position of her arms and the direction of her gaze (impulsive decision making). She was now squeezing her breast and I then painted a stream coming from it. At this point I made a sketch of it to explore options and possibilities. In the sketch, the stream coming from her breast turned into a stream of small fish each getting larger as it moved away from her body and then sketched images in the background that I was recognizing from the brushstrokes and color forms. Getting back to the painting, I added the stream of fluid coming from her breast and then had the inspiration to add a young rabbit catching that stream in its mouth, being fed, leading me to the title “Mother (Beautiful Witch).”

The owl and wolf figures emerged form the brushstrokes creating a drama in the painting. I have felt a connection to rabbits since I was a young boy and have developed several understandings of that connection. One is this: It’s the rabbits that watch over our houses at nite, protecting us from predators, intruders and disease. And also, it’s the rabbits that lead the lost out of the woods but sometimes the owl and wolf beings find them first. Both the painting and the little essay were developed independent of each other but form a natural union.

The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex II language appears birthed from the mouth, words become things, places and people. Can you tutor the viewer a little bit about the pantheon or activity in this painting?

Storytelling is a tradition of many of the tribes in North America (and many indigenous cultures) including my own, the Ojibwa or Anishinaabe, as we call ourselves. It has been portrayed visually, most popular as sculpture of the Southwest Pueblo and Hopi tribes as a woman with many children attached to her. My rendition of this concept was inspired by my experience and knowledge of the stories told by my people and was developed through sketching. In addition to my painting, I sketch prolifically, often capturing the tip of an idea or concept that may lead to or inform a future painting. Everything I paint or sketch comes from my memories, dreams or imagination, or directly from real life, never from photographs or screens. The imagery or episodes coming from the mouth of the woman in “The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex II” all come from my visual language developed over years of exploration and in this particular painting, from my dreams and imagination.

What role does the moon play in your paintings?

Often the moon merely emphasizes the nite time portrayal of my spiritual paintings. For me it is the nite time when the magic and the mystical happen. And it is my preferred time to paint or sketch as I am almost always out in my studio until 2 or 3am, or later.

I love to sketch. I love seeing other artists’ sketches. Children’s drawings are the absolute best, because their abstractions, inventions and raw honesty just blow me away.

I always carry a sketchbook with me wherever I go, especially when I travel. To me, drawing or sketching is a form of note taking. It is a method of recording the lucid or fragmented thoughts passing through my mind, conscious or dreaming. Sometimes I see a story, sometimes a phrase, or sometimes just a title. It’s also a camera photographing the weird landscape (my imagination) that I dare to allow myself to journey through. It is a process where I try to do some fearless exploration. But almost always, the scenes in my mind are only temporary, fleeting, unexpected images of dreams, imagination and memories. Frequent sketching allows me to capture some of those images and to discover the ones that are unseen.

When I was an art student at the University of Minnesota, I met a musician playing his guitar and singing songs for tips on the sidewalks in Dinkytown. His name was Jerry Rau. Jerry was a Vietnam vet and a gentle soul, and he and I became friends. One day I mentioned to him about sketching an idea before I forgot it. He told me that he always carries a notebook with him explaining, “You never know when a song will come to you. You think you will remember it, but sometimes when you turn your attention for even a second, they float away, like a dream. If you don’t write it down, it will go to the next songwriter. And if he doesn’t catch it, it goes to the next. And if he doesn’t catch it, they all end up with Bob Dylan.”

Sketching is also a method of exploring. Sometimes being able to see only the beginning of a story, a song, a poem, the artist begins illustrating an idea, not knowing what or where it will lead to. Like a clown who pulls what he thinks is just one handkerchief from his shirt pocket, he pulls out cloth after cloth, one idea leading to another until you have a more complete vision of the story or song.

For some time now, I have thought of my sketches as lyrics to a song and coloring and painting my sketches as putting those words to music. Adding color and the abstraction of loose brushstrokes brings a new dimension of the sketch to life. The drawing becomes a leaping-off point and is eventually abandoned as the artist responds to what is evolving right in front of him/her. While translating a sketch to a painting, the artist starts painting but sometimes begins to experience new inspirations right there at the easel (pulling new or different handkerchiefs from his shirt pocket). These realizations make the process original (again) and the sketch and the painting become two different works of art, each significant. Sometimes I find it necessary to make quick little sketches or studies to assist a painting in progress as new ideas emerge or because I feel the need to alter the composition.

For me, sketching is instrumental for evolving ideas and for understanding the incomplete.

Jim Denomie Sketch Work Rez Rabbit Press

Interview by Mitchell Pluto

Baetylus and our birthright to know our brain

our birthright is to know our brain and to become aware of the impact of meteorites on our language.

but first

guard the self that believes in you. the best hallucination is a healthy belief. a belief in self without vanity is sincere and free magic. magic without title, property or theft.

which older you are we anyway?

everything about the overactive amygdala is the source of insular cortex phantoms, wrathful deities averting ourselves from sapience. it keeps us from enjoying our temporal lobes, ruled by self-rejection in the temple of the body.

autoscopy, is the real spirituality with particles and waves. this tide will lead to a more balanced clonal pluralization of selves. to be one with everything, one is everything.

_{written by ©Mitchell Pluto July 29, 2022}

Born Under a Radioactive Transit: Art and Poems by Alicia Lasne

In this illusory quest
to survival, I abstain
to say your name.
In this twilight world
where everything freezes;
inevitably.
I watch this glow
on the horizon
of our extinction

The human being dreaming of the world of tomorrow
Poison the last rivers;
Who was already feeding him more.
In a deafening silence;
Consumes;
What it is no longer:
human

And as in every moment, the eternity of a breath depends on it.
The human being, called to disappear under an acid rain, seizes the last gleam which remains to him.
He then becomes the last link in a corrupt chain, broken down to his DNA.
He is then surprised that he still has a last glimmer of hope in this twilight disaster.
In a canicular suffocation, he observes the beauty of the world he has just destroyed.
The power-seeking human suddenly stops and stares at his bloodied hands.
He understands then that in each moment, the eternity of a breath depends on it.

Some will say I was born on a rainy day, others will tell you it was a full moon night. The reality is very different, I was born in 1986 in Normandy between a radioactive cloud caused by the explosion of a nuclear reactor and the passage of comet Halley. This is how all things begin.

Written by Alicia Lasne

**Artist** **Alicia Lasne in her studio**

In this collapse, where a universal rebirth can only be inevitable, I sew, suture, glue on pieces of fabric like exvotos, half-spoken prayers.

**Alicia Lasne** **sewing a picture together**

I weave this nature too often ransacked by our lifestyles. Constantly questioning myself about what I am, as a human being. What is my place, my role, our mission on this Earth? What should I change to no longer feed a society of destruction, but a society of the Living.

Full moon in Capricorn, Erotic Drawings by Richard Gessner

Limulus, is my favorite arthropod, it’s the oldest species on the planet.

I’m thinking about sex 24/7. Raging hormonal beach Paradises stretch on infinitely into horny horizons. The sight of beautiful fertility Goddesses is always more pleasant to behold than old men covered with craters of acne scars, or Syphlytic doomsday warthogs with copper sulfate tusks!!

Naked ladies have a storied history in the history of art. From Boucher, Bouguereau, Anders Zorn, Mel Ramos, Eric Fischl, pin up art of Elvgren and Driben….Like Brooke Burke and 10 thousand other Brunettes. Hans Bellmer is a favorite. Independent from art, the naked lady in public viewed by the salivating Voyeur since time immemorial is inspirational.

Hans Bellmer appeals to me because it’s Life itself. What beauties can be viewed spontaneously in the street. It is bizarre and an otherworldly ethereal quality that I like.

written by Richard Gessner

**Richard Gessner** at Studio Montclair, Leach Gallery 641 Bloomfield Avenue
Montclair, NJ

**Artist and Short Story Writer Richard Gessner**

more art and info on Richard Gessner can be found at

The Hamilton Street Gallery

It is better to be an oracle than a king by P.D. Newman

It is better to be an oracle than a king

To play the lyre, and the aulos, and sing

Leading maenads ‘round in a ring

Yes, ‘tis better to be an oracle than a king

_{written by ©P.D. Newman}

P.D. Newman is an independent researcher located in the southern US, specializing in the history of the use of entheogenic substances in religious rituals and initiatory rites. He is the author of the books, Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry, Angels in Vermilion: The Philosophers’ Stone from Dee to DMT, and the forthcoming title, Day Trips and Night Flights: Anabasis, Katabasis, and Entheogenic Ekstasis in Myth and Rite. The Secret Teachings of All Ages (TV Series documentary) 2023

cultivation phases of the basal ganglia and paleomammalian soul

the psychic robot, how our animal selves passed through the portions of different brain territories. the snakes, the monkey scribe, and now the circuit board advisory city-state. clay tablets as a big golem, ideas as ghosts informing the brain

The Gnosis of the Mirage and other Poems Enrique de Santiago

THE GNOSIS OF THE MIRAGE

“Relativity makes distance meaningless, but the situation is even worse when quantum mechanics intervenes, since it questions the idea of place.”
Paul Davis.

Of the clouds contained for centuries
of the air that winds the violet knot of meaning
And of every dark shape that embraces the sound of the world
the lit line of the labyrinth emerges
contemplating ourselves immersed in this myriad of fluids
that embrace us from the beginning
and from before in its reverse reality
to end up drowned in the crack of fate
and never know what the essential source of the moon holds
nor the celestial song of the plumage found in the boreal bosom
this is how the air is thrown into being
Without measure
no understanding
while diligently it oxidizes and hastens its decline.

WINGED PHOTOTROPISM

nothing ends,
just a keep going around in a spiral,
at the command of vector dreams,
that rest on the moon that raises the stamens,
Like the names I’ve forgotten
my own,
and the name of my destiny,
while I move hugging the clouds
with my numbers on the side of my brain
and my breath laughing again.

*The astral root*, acrylic on canvas 118 x 85cm

MANDRAGORA, ASTRAL ROOT

telluric resonance
with its harsh echo that stuns reason
magmatic word that arises from the refusal of the verb
black poetry on its sharp path
the one that hurts the one who goes into its mystery
with the blessed dagger of the fallen angels
that are arranged on the sidewalk of dawn
illuminated by the forgotten star
between rivers of multitude of bones
council opening submerging volcanic fire
where the salamander dances
at the right time and hour
when the word that unleashes the lightning is released
with its fractal memory
that renews the solanaceous plant
what is the mandrake of the damned
and of the saved.

*Under the Luciferian influence*, acrylic and ink on Conqueror 300 gm paper

PERPETUAL FLORA

From foliage ancient and forgotten,
when time was captive in the womb of time
even before the language of birds appeared,
that lost and extinct star arose,
loved from her nebula
and awaited by the early cicadas,
it was so that she sang her scrolls
and she danced the mystery of the nymphs,
hidden in the mystery of her and in the first number of her name
because this is found in the sum of the rings of a forest,
and her dress is the transmutation of the nymph
something like that, like a thousand and eighty times the face of the moon.

*Winged Past*, acrylic on 300 gm Canson paper, 30 x 39 cm

THE PAST OF THE FOREST

I love your origin from the unknown
with that particular elliptical aroma
like an elk that descended from a learned galaxy
there between the sources of light and condensed matter
close sister of the unchanging logos
the one you robbed by surprise
On the oblique ship that was hidden
with their inverted masts on the sleepwalking skins
begin to awaken from amazement
of so many days of your destiny
without knowing why ??
away from the inanimate pavement
that carries with your long steps
in the certain uncertainty
in the sacred place
that goes off
and it bares to oblivion.

*Astral Watcher*, acrylic on Canson 300 gm paper. 40x30cm

THE RELENTLESS OUROBOROS

beyond the wind
in a northern region of the universe
an uncertain number of names
dissolved by the golden flame of oblivion
They descend from the crevice of a nebula
while the bird as watchman of the secret
sing their celestial nomenclatures
to revive them in their new sap.

DISTANCE

The lightness of your poetry taught me to look beyond
in that place where we don’t understand each other
a room of emptiness and fullness
where there is enough space to brush your hair.

*The implacable oracle*, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 70 cm

NGC 6753

When a star collapses, does part of your destiny end?
Do you know the emptiness that will come in the litany of the dream of the demiurge?
Each sphere engraves its own ellipse so as not to perpetuate it
because the grass kisses the constellations
until it loses sight of its splendor
and the turn announces its sunset
like love dissolved in nothing
where the word is not perpetuated
And these verses will disappear when the screens turn off
so too the leaves yellow following the dust
Of expired stars in forgotten hells
parked in some empty universe
waiting to speak from the past
and the future.

*Prehistory of the present*. acrylic on canvas, 70 x 70 cm

CYCLES IN COSMIC WETLANDS

rising winds
without becoming storms
They spring from the soul until they inhabit the shadow
that takes the lonely measure
of the one who forgets the kiss
when long ago life rocked its cocoon
unaware of his hypocrisy
looking for the fierce copper mascada
while we smell that inexorable time
that snatches the lights rapidly in the twilight
where every month is the same for everyone
and between the mist and the pit
the same efforts start
the same young people with their ideals
who see their elders leave
clinging to clothes like the smell of tobacco
and the humidity of the asphalt
every year is the same for those who do not see the clouds
but in the long run it’s the same music
fashions are fashions and your makeup is the same
and when you cry a black line tears your face
similar to the one that tears your soul
love that sucks life and releases it
leaving us exhausted for months
Until I return for another rest of life
like a pleasant and hostile embrace
and there is no way to draw life
to know how to color it
it only comes around every corner
sneaky and silent
distinguishing itself in a fissure of time
when it’s too late to decide or repent
Well, it installs, without further ado…
with his elastic suit that loses his memory
in that last station
when everyone wants to change their habit
nothing more like life
that first puff of cigarette
strange, pleasant and bitter
slight time that will end in ashes
hopelessly.

The bodies remained weightless
next to each other
faced with the cosmic dilemma
and to the protocol of the farewell,
he perceived the aroma of the bones
while she expired her step at night
with a certain harshness
the one that evaporates with the days
slow and silent
like that subordinate hatefulness of truncated desire

*The music of the spheres,* acrylic on Canson paper, 250 gms. 25 x 32.5 cm

GRAVITATIONAL CONDITION

On the edge of my lithic archetypes
sweet new grass grows
that with its solemn verticality
wants to hug the moon
in serene times
like your memories
before forging the tides
and unleash the liquid of his beloved
burning oblivion
and shadow
permian knots
skeletons
going down the river of oblivion
everlastingly
in its exact ritual.

*Early Invisible*, acrylic on canvas, 65 x 81 cms

ANIMA WORLD

Mother Earth exhaled the perfume of redemption
while the useless man and dismembered course
listened to the night without name or shadow,
in order to gain oxidizable objects,
at the midpoint of his fecal abyss,
with the emptiness left by fear
and so he names himself among the speechless faces
that day when chemical weddings were prepared
without finding for your optic cells
when the leaves of the forest fall slowly
and to my ears comes the roar of the terrestrial kiss
which is a sound to be ocher dust in solar memory
in the end of time
With its circular principle in the appointed mystery,
while third world children are murdered
to make toys that were not for them.
Before knowing the sky and the gods
she appears from the beginning taming the chords of silence
she, well, she knows the key to love in a sleeping place
and she licks the perpendicular voices of the waters
like rivers that arise from the carboniferous
she well she knows how to offer the womb
to spawn the world.

*Astral fissure*, oil on prepared cardboard, 60 x 45 cm

blank slate

“My soul is from another place, I am sure of it, and I intend to end up there.”
Rumi

Reset the inconsequential
To restart with the fruitful

A call in the language of stars by Felipe López Osses

Two distant skies cover hopes united by noble commitment. The attractive conviction settles in the memory and encourages the shared future. To be one in this chaotic transit and capture the inevitable reunion, there is the powerful meaning

*the gift of time*
oil on canvas
70x50cm
2022

In the unknown, we met
In hope, we agree
In conviction, we unite and dream
In determination, we project
We have been laughing and crying,
breath and fatigue,
shared flavors
and we share sounds.
I saw you dance and I met
my longest smile.
I heard you sing and I knew
I already have a new motto.
And now I’m going up
to new heights,
where the brushstrokes stand out,
and claim their chimera.
The time will be long
enough to plant
that immersed ideal
what we have to go through

*Kaslarin Karasina*: **For the Darkness of your Eyelashes**
oil on canvas
60 x 50 cm.
2021

This work is inspired by the song of the same name by the Turkish musician Beynelmilân. In this painting I wanted to reflect the energy of the person portrayed, her gaze reflects a mystery that allows various interpretations

*REsIgnifiKance* (detail)
oil on canvas
140 x 125 cm.
2022

A call in the language of stars
a blind search paid off.
reviving convictions
reincarnated in songs.
Five phases of illusions
and another five of dilemmas.
fears are not noticed
when promises bloom…

*Chena trails*
Pens on canvas
60x100cm.
2016

This drawing is the first one I made with the “Chromatic Story” technique. It is inspired by the experiences and omens that I experienced during the almost 8 years that I lived near Chena Hill, a place full of inspiration and history.

Felipe López Osses is a self-taught cartoonist and painter born in Linares, Chile. His foray into art began in his childhood, when he began to develop his creativity and work with many details. In his works he mainly uses ballpoint pens and oils. His inspiration comes from nature and music. In 2015 he began to work with his own technique: pens on canvas, a technique to which he gave the name “Chromatic Story”, since it is “an invitation to the viewer to take a detailed tour of the details and symbolism, encouraging their own interpretation of the work