Being comfortable with calling myself an artist happened very recently. I have been drawing and painting since I was old enough to hold a crayon, but never considered myself an artist. It may have been imposter syndrome, but only in the past couple years have I fully embraced the title of artist, that I am one, and allowed myself to really lean into that. I feel like accepting that title has allowed me to break past some barriers I had unknowingly placed onto myself.
The Hermit. Acrylic on panel.Gentle. Acrylic on Panel.
I love history, folklore and nature. I go on hikes to be inspired and try to paint this unwritten language that is inside each of us. The one that connects us to our core and our roots with Mother Earth, and shows that every living creature is connected.
Bearn. Oil on canvas.
My greatest love is oil, but I’m very eclectic in my studio. Some things can only be brought to life in oil, some in acrylic, some in ink and some in relief printing or clay.
Bittersweet. Acrylic on panel.
I’m constantly inspired by other artists and there are so many great ones. The very first artist that made me believe I could do this was Brian Froud. My family couldn’t afford his amazing books when I was a kid, so my grandma would take me to the bookstore and I would sit in the aisle and pour over them. As an adult I’ve collected almost all of his work and he is a huge inspiration for me. He makes magic seem possible.
The Witches Assistant. Oil on canvas.
I grew up on fantasy and historical fiction. Middle Earth and Hogwarts were my safe places as a kid. I still read Tolkien over and over. Edgar Allen Poe shows beauty in darkness, which is a theme I explore a lot in my work. Susanna Kearsley and Simone St. James are both incredible historical fiction authors. I collect books about mythology, spirits, history, Paganism and folklore; much of the symbolism I find in them ends up in my work. I would have a full library at my house if I could.
The cruelty of life is only equaled by art… I used to search a lot in the paths of art for what could express what was going on inside me and my view of the world, but I was always faced with unfree spaces, spaces depicted by religion or what is connected with it..
My imagination was always trapped. When I dive into the past with deep sadness..
I did not know that imagination can lead us to a better future until I became acquainted with surrealism.
Closed areas of my subconscious began to open up to me.
I had never known these closed areas of my subconscious mind before.
I did not have complete freedom of expression with my body, and now I do.
Surrealism is a systematic breaking of the boundaries of reality, the body, society and religion.
Also, I was afraid to delve into fields that I had not studied or practiced, such as drawing, photography and cinema, but Surrealism turned me into an active person who thirsted for all kinds of arts.
I am not only a surrealist artist, I also owe a lot to surrealism… Reconciliation with the unconscious mind can change the world for the better… and it can be an iron wall stands against all life’s difficulties.
Linking and developing science and keeping pace with technological development and the subconscious freedom are able to create a better world.
This is surrealism for me
written by Ghadah Kamal
Ghadah Kamal is a surrealist visual artist, writer, and poet…Coordinator of performances and workshops and cinema screenings of The international exhibition of surrealism Cairo Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Exhibition / Alexandria and founding member of the Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group..Founding member of the Chrysopoeia surrealist union. Editor of the Surrealist Cities section of the Room surrealist magazine and editor at Sulfur Surrealist Jungle.
I believe that I died when I was a child. Or perhaps a part of me died and something different was brought back. After that, things were not the same for me. I had several more brushes with death and suffering moving forward. These experiences shaped who I would become. They taught me about the uncertainty and duality of life and also brought me to a fierce inward state of being.
Decisive Action
I grew up in a world of adults. I was told that children were to be seen and not heard. I was given long stretches of time to play on my own. I turned to art and creative pursuits as a way to escape into the worlds I preferred to create. I built elaborate doll houses and loved magical wilderness spaces. I was inspired by the world of Fae that Brain Froud so beautifully captured. I was fortunate that my mother took me to art museums where I fell in love immediately with the language of art.
Transform
I believe that art has the power to heal, inspire and awaken; it has saved my life more times than I can count. As an adult, I have been lucky to keep my curiosity and magic alive. I pride myself on growth and becoming more and more who I prefer to be. I have now trained for over a decade in mystic and spiritual disciplines with the mission to inspire the world with my connection to what I call the Muse.
Allies
When I paint, I am moved by intuitive Muse forces from moment-to-moment, making marks with a variety of implements from my hands to brushes and handmade tools. I create from an empty meditative space, not knowing what will come out. There’s a huge amount of surrendering as I have to allow things to be as they are. Ugly or beautiful… I have to release all judgement. It’s one of the hardest things I do. It feels very vulnerable for me to allow “what is” when people are watching. And that is part of my work.
Glamour
What comes next often depends on the energy in a place, or time, or the viewers themselves who I feel pull the work through me. Over a period of 6-12 hours, sharp images, texts, and shapes are revealed as profound messages. Through abstraction, the art becomes the Oracle and represents the literal and metaphorical power of transformation. My art is in a constant state of service.
I Surrender All
The method I use requires a forgiving material like acrylic paint that permits rapid revisions. I think of my work as evolving in the moment.
Weight of Heart
Some parts gets covered up and pushed back and others change and are pulled forward. The pieces tell their own narrative as they become deeper with layers and more defined. I work on large 6 foot x 4 foot pieces of birch and frequently layer with colored pencil, watercolors, oil pastels, pouring paint, acrylic ink, China marker and more.
Gallery
When the pieces are ready we work hard to meticulously scan them at high resolution and make them into Oracle cards. I have always believed that these images are for others and sharing them is important as meaning makers for others. I release new each series of cards as they become available. Currently series 1 + 2 are available and I am painting pieces that will become Series 3 + 4 now.
Oracle Cards
I have performed this oracle painting performance every week at festivals, clubs and events, and online for the past 6 years. I believe the true magic is that these pieces are not only for viewing but can also be experienced. I invite you to journey with me as I discover the messages the Divine Muse will uncover next!
Eric Capron is a self-taught artist. He discovers the arts of the circus and the world of the puppet.
Eric Capron. Artiste autodidacte au parcours singulier. Dès son plus jeune âge, la dyslexie le marginalise. Enfant solitaire, il quitte très tôt les bancs de l’école et l’univers familial. Commence une vie de saltimbanque, découvre les arts du cirque, le monde de la marionnette.
Artiste en perpétuelle mutation. Dorénavant un travail quotidien permanent de production d’œuvres en papier mâché : des corps mis en scène. Des corps non genrés, incolores, sans modèles, mais étonnamment présents à nos regards amis. Ils existent pour eux-mêmes, d’abord.
Les sculptures sensibles d’Eric Capron racontent l’âme humaine, la fragilité de nos destins. L’artiste revisite les mythes fondateurs, puisant ses références dans la mythologie, l’art sacré et profane, l’univers onirique, les grands textes de la littérature.
« J’ai le sentiment d’être l’instrument de quelque chose qui me dépasse, une sorte de miracle, une boite de Pandore qui s’est ouverte…» nous confie-t-il.
macsiMe is a French artist who is inspired by impact. macsiMe prefers no elaboration. only the act of friction and reaction speaks for itself
All in Nothing- Nothing in Everything I draw I erase I glue I scratch I tear I stop, look, look And I start again Lots of “I” s but that is what Art is Art is just answer
\
macsiMe lives in Le Mans, France enjoys observing people is inspired by action
THIS AN AUTHORIZED DUPLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT FROM THE ARTIST MACSIME
I am from the generation of the end of the Second World War and the occupation. I have often wondered if it had any effect on my life. I read a statement by a British anthropologist who claimed that there is such a thing in us as genetic memory. All emotions and experiences of generations are recorded in this memory. According to this theory, my generation has genetically passed down from their parents everything that happened to them.
My whole family, father, mother, grandfather, and two of my father’s brothers, were in German concentration camps in Poland during the occupation. Grandpa and uncle never returned from there. My father spent the entire occupation in camps – Majdanek, and later Flossenburg. He showed extraordinary fortitude and willpower to survive. He didn’t tell much about his stay, and I am filled with empty laughter when I read about the repressions and sufferings of some of the heroes of the post-war period. Without taking anything away from them, of course.
Paradoxically, right after the war, my parents (because we had no place to live) were assigned an apartment in a barrack at Majdanek, five meters from the barbed wire of the camp. It was a barrack where the SS staff lived during the war. Not only my family lived there because at that time one of the many rooms of this barrack was called an apartment. I, as a small child, saw this camp up close.
The remains and remnants were not yet organized and archived as they are today in the form of a photographic museum. It was specific. In the crematorium, there were still half-burnt human corpses. In the barracks, thousands of dolls and teddy bears, toys left by children. A barrack – processing human bodies into soap, lampshades made of human skin, a barrack – filled only with glasses or hair cut from women’s heads. I used to watch it as a little kid because, frankly, no one paid any attention to me.
Only at night the camp guards, with flashlights and shovels, search for gold buried under these barracks. Left by the prisoners of the camp, hoping that one day they will redeem themselves from the hands of the torturers. I wasn’t a prisoner, but it’s probably not without reason that I’ve had dreams all my life that I’m in these camps and I’m constantly escaping from them. So something is “on”.
Happiness is not a constant state, and I don’t think there are people who are in it all the time and are euphorically happy. For me, these are some, sometimes completely unforeseen, actually short moments in life that cause this state. And I also think that we remember the moments of unhappiness more than the moments of happiness, it is easier to recall them in memory (or this is a feature of my personality).
Happiness is no stranger to me, of course. I’ve had different moments. In family life, professional life, in states of love intoxication, and alcohol intoxication. But what sticks most in my memory are those seemingly insignificant moments in which I experienced happiness.
In contact with nature, which fascinates me, shocks me with its beauty, and terrifies me with its ruthlessness. I am basically a loner and I feel happy when I look at the sky at midnight and a storm catches me as I swim alone through the middle of the lake. As I get older, I get more and more vulnerable and less and less happy. I look at the species “homo sapiens” with sadness. His unbridled greed, lust for money, disrespect for nature. Also people’s lack of respect for their own species. 80 years of relative peace, without global war (that’s almost two generations), has made people mentally lazy. Dreams of the return of fascism are born. When I was a kid, I saw how it ends.
I live in Poland, near Warsaw, although I was born in Zamość. I am married with three adult daughters and two dogs. I am a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw at the faculty of painting. Throughout my professional life, I have been dealing with applied graphics, as well as writing and drawing comic books for children (published in millions).
However, painting, to which I returned after years of break, is my passion and my main goal in life. In my work I have always revolved around abstraction, which for me is a form that requires control over form, composition and color. I have developed my own method of combining various materials (wood, cardboard, fabric, resins, glues, acrylic paints) so that the resulting work has a distinct structure and space. My father was a sculptor, maybe that also shaped my aspirations.
Usually, the design of the painting is created earlier, on paper, but I think about it for a long time before I approach the canvas. And although it seems that the exact plan is, I need a lot of time to determine what the painting will look like in the end. Sometimes it develops quite quickly, i.e. three, four days, and sometimes a month.
WRITTEN BY TADEUSZ BARANOWSKI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL ARTWORK AND WRITING IN THIS POST IS A COPYRIGHT OF TADEUSZ BARANOWSKI. THIS AN AUTHORIZED DUPLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT
Despite the different routes I chose to go exploring alone, I am grateful to the invites that were extended yesterday by individuals who, like me, make their own meaning out of the marked holidays.
I know of so many others like us who are increasingly becoming more comfortable with revising or creating the things they need to create to exist with within and outside of time on their own terms. Funny story, I encountered others who were thieving a whole day to themselves and they asked me to give them a tour because they felt safer exploring the rest of the complex. I always wanted to be a tour guide for the abandoned.
Shanta Lee is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction, journalism, a visual artist and public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that has been widely featured. Her current multimedia exhibition, Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine, which features her short film, interviews, and photography, and other items is currently on view at University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art from now until Spring 2023. To learn more about her work, visit: Shantalee.com
wet and quiet land wait in the wind the worm coils and swallows the shape of the lips
close the shadow and the marrow and the bone they are disturbed in deep roots they take silence from the air through places without names forgotten
covered with earth white skeleton naked skin lungs veins viscera encephalitic mass heart kidneys white and purple meat rests in an old and busted drawer
the arteries return with the sound of the rivers trees fertilizer food
a body stopped and without time
dressed for an end shoes shined by a loved one mouth sealed with glue the neck covered by a silk cloth
smell of flower crowns the urn is sober no religious symbols the drawer is an astral elevator that goes out to say goodbye It’s open and I look at the faces that cry
truce and no drawer naked they have left me on the table for autopsies
Carlos Alberto Lizama Peña is a prominent Chilean Visual Artist has stood out in various national and international exhibitions, currently works and develops his work as a cultural and educational manager in the House of Culture of the Commune of El Bosque.
Co-executor in the FONDART Project “Open Sky Gallery South Zone Cultural Corridor “Work Production Workshop Coordinator”. March – September 2008 Mosaic Art Mural Program, El Bosque, Artistic Director, December 2006-February 2007 Murals Program on Facades of Villa la Pradera and Villa San Fernando, Quilicura, December 2006-January 2007 Painting classes, Anselmo Cádiz Cultural Center, Commune of El Bosque, 1998 to date La Familia Foundation, Huechuraba, Painting Classes, 2002,2003,2004 Trigal Special School, Huechuraba Plastic Arts Classes, 2003 Painting workshop, Cristo Vive, Huechuraba April-December 2002-2004 Drawing and painting classes, Mun. from Huechuraba Oct-December 2002 Painting workshop, Municipality of Huechuraba October 1997
Oil painting classes, Mun. of Quilicura October and December 1997 Muralism Workshop, Millahue Foundation May 1996 Extracurricular Painting Classes, Sta Teresa High School, Mun. of Independence, November 1995 – January 1996 Mural Art Project Paint your Paint, Mun. of Conchalí, June – August 1996 Paint Your Neighborhood Mural Project, New Orleans, USA October – December 1995 Painting Classes, Youth Development Program, Conchalí, September and October 1995 Artistic Workshop, PRODEMU Foundation, Commune of La Granja Esane Professional Institute, Graduate Assistantship in Advertising Graphic Design in Drawing and Color Branches, 1988
Curatorship of the Local Gestures I, II and III Exhibition, Art Gallery, 2005, 2006, and 2007 Guillermo Nuñez Art Gallery
Local Gestures I and II Exhibition at Contemporary Art Gallery, Quilicura, 2006 and 2007
December 1998 Work “Cantata de Santa María de Iquique,” Fondart Project, El Bosque Cultural House November 1999 Play “Nemesio Pelao, What has happened to you”, directed by Andrés Pérez October 2000 “Chañarcillo,” directed by Andrés Pérez, Antonio Varas Theater April 2000 “The Exodus,” Chinese shadow play of his own creation October 2001 Chinese shadows for the play “El Golpe,” directed by Eduardo Saez, Teatro Novedades (selected for Teatro a Mil 2002) August-September 2004 Work ”1907 The year of the black flower’‘, La Pato Gallina theater company, pictorial work of curtains.
The ugliest thing I’ve seen is a video of a dog being cooked alive and a picture of a cat being skinned alive. Both were on Facebook. I’ll never forgive whoever posted them. Dogs are my friends. The scarcest thing that has ever happened to me was my grandfather chasing us around a dark house wearing a caveman mask when we were little kids.
from High School Year Book
I enjoy muddy colors, the colors the Old Masters used. I just like the warmth and earthiness of them. I use whatever color seems appropriate to me based on what I know about color and how I want the paintings to look.
Art is magick. I don’t think it influences my artwork any differently now that I practice. It’s more like I am aware that it’s basically the same process.
What is Ego Death? The show started with a title, “Ego Death”, and then I built a show around that. The term is pretty misunderstood. In a nutshell It refers to temporarily losing your sense of identity, usually from psychedelics which is a legitimate mystical experience.
There are too many contemporary artists I like. You can look at the Dark Art Society podcast since the majority of the artists I have interviewed I am a fan of. The only new band I can think of that I like is Invasives.
Born on November 12th, 1967, in the harbor town of San Pedro, CA, Chet Zar’s interest in art began at an early age. His parents were always very supportive and never put any limits on his creativity. His entire childhood was spent drawing, sculpting and painting.
Zar’s interest in the darker side of art began in the earliest stages of his life. A natural fascination with all things strange fostered within himself a deep connection to horror movies and dark imagery. He could relate to the feelings of fear, anxiety and isolation that they conveyed. These are themes which had permeated most of his childhood drawings and paintings and are reflected in his work to this day.
The combined interest in horror films and art eventually culminated into a career as a special effects make up artist, designer and sculptor for the motion picture industry, designing and creating creatures and make up effects effects for such films as, “The Ring”, “Hellboy I & II”, “Planet of the Apes” and the critically acclaimed music videos for the art metal band Tool. Zar also embraced the digital side of special effects as well, utitlizing the computer to translate his dark vision with 3D animation for Tool’s live shows and subsequently releasing many of them on his own DVD of dark 3D animation, “Disturb the Normal”.
But the many years spent dealing with all of the politics and artistic compromises of the film industry left Zar feeling creatively stagnant. At the beginning of 2000 (at the suggestion of horror author Clive Barker), he decided to go back to his roots and focus on his own original works and try his hand at fine art, specifically painting in oils. The result has been a renewed sense of purpose, artistic freedom and a clarity of vision that is evident in his darkly surreal (and often darkly humorous) paintings.
His artistic influences include painter James Zar (stepfather and artistic mentor), Beksinski, H.R. Giger, Frank Frazetta, M.C. Escher, Bosch, John Singer Sargent and Norman Rockwell just to name a few.
“Chet’s art is beautiful & scary. His style has a modern twist crashing into a classical approach. I think Chet is a master painter on his way to making a great mark in our little world. Wanna do something smart with your money? Invest in a Chet Zar painting.” – Adam Jones (TOOL)
Mitchell Pluto 