I knew I was an artist when I realized that art was therapy for me. When I’m not painting I’m sad and angry. It has become a daily need to survive like… eat. Creation is for me a “vital outlet”, that is to say that I have to vomit the darkness that there is at the bottom of my guts so as not to sink while continuing to live with the people I love. It took me a long time to accept who I was. Today it is obvious. I eat, I shit, I paint and I sleep. I think that’s what being an artist is.
I have a lot of trouble communicating with others. I internalize everything so at some point it has TO EXPLODE ON THE CANVAS. To create, I draw inspiration from my own emotions and feelings that I can’t understand. Through the representation of the human body, I try to communicate these emotions. That’s why my paintings are very visceral: I have to dig into human bodies to see what’s inside.
You can then see in my paintings themes like identity, violence and love passion. Sometimes the spectators see monsters in my paintings but in my opinion, it is more about monstrous humans. It’s important to specify because it’s very different and it says a lot about the world in which we live.
I like to expand my pictorial universe on other supports. For a few years I have been sewing masks and costumes, and I have been doing performances. It’s as if my creatures in my paintings come out and become alive.
Cecily Brown is one of the artists I admire because she manages to find this balance between figuration and abstraction. In his work I see human bodies in motion but maybe my neighbor will see something else. I wish I could play with the viewer as well as she does. I love the idea of being able to inspire multiple stories through a single image.
An atypical course… Manitoba by its artist name lives and works in Biganos on the Arcachon basin. French international artist born in 1966 in Algéria, self taught psychedelic and visionary artist, began his career at 48 years old , he took a 180-degree turn and left his job as a chemist to devote himself to his revelation, painting. This total questioning allowed him to express his great freedom as an artist.
An Eye on Emptiness
In the heart of the moment,
where time unravels,
At the heart of oneself, where no one
Others can go, build
Where to rebuild from nothing
What completes us
To just have to be
Fill this emptiness
Who fills the gaps
As long as we dare to share
Without hesitation without shading
As beautiful nature made us
In the blood fire
From our boiler
To happiness that fills us
The heart, like the child, the bird
Who paws and whistles the curious
Impatience of in body
To be surprised to be...
And drill
The mystery,
There where
transparent
The silence
Of between
The
Words...
To the life
In love
An artist, on the one hand in reaction to societal behaviors that paralyze many minds. But also to shake off this gloom and this funny habit that humans have to complain and believe that everything comes from outside …
The Emergence of the Sunflower
Presentation in the sun
To the heliotrope thought
As we turn
Towards the star of light
I light the fuse
tinder, fungus
Trees, saprophyte
If any, getting rid of
Slag and other lures
Societal, for its petals
Get out of the futile, the straightjacket
Of what will you say
and leave the flower in the beak
Beat nature awakening
In and around you.
Let consciousness emancipate
Brillamos, a little, a lot
To insanity
the cat's paw Man
Live the emergence and cultivate our nature
And the one who welcomes us, a good vibe
The Dead Flower More
Manitoba takes us on a journey through its colorful and spiritual universe where shapes and colors combine infinity. His art transmits passion and thirst for life, inspired by an original movement in the spirit of an ancestral memory, close to the primary arts. The artist invites us to the source, of all these lives around us and this natural song of hope that grows beyond borders and other forms of conditioning. A little shamanic, he invites us into the silence between the words, as if out of time, for a moment …
Delphine Cadoré French Outsider Artist born in Paris 1972
Immerse yourself in a universe where, under the gaze of the painter, the shapes come undone, round off and blend together. Guessing a fish that reminds us of the softness, the slowness, the fluidity of water.
The one where we all bathed, in the hollow of our mothers’ bellies. Meet the wolf, in all its guises: nurturer, progenitor, and also the least tender who ate the grandmother. A wolf, disturbing and comforting, like the passage of time; it swallows, digests and ends up carrying within itself lives and entire cities.
Discover, here and there, the bird, bearer of poetry. Light and soft, it soothes and lifts your head into the clouds. Then meet a woman who bathes in these waters, in this atmosphere of dream and creation. In this atmosphere where life explodes, the children clinging to the breast, and the vaginas still open from childbirth.
Delphine Cadoré offers us to discover her universe where metaphors rub shoulders with life, the real, the most visceral.
She paints in a powerful energy in which she embeds supports and techniques. She draws, inks, paints, coats, scratches, cuts… for the magic to work. And the magic works: we are caught up in the movement, and each canvas lifts us a little more into this universe of raw poetry.
I don’t consider myself an artist, I think that each of us is, but some have forgotten that, children are artists in their own right because they have retained this spontaneity that we later lack.
I have no real artistic influence, I like Francis Bacon as well as Paul Gauguin and many others, it’s quite heterogeneous in fact and I discover great artists every day via social networks. As a child, I had the chance to rub shoulders with many artists, illustrators, photographers, musicians, we lived in a community, so I think I always drew.
I am the mother of 4 children, two of whom are already adults and on their own, but I still have two little ones! it’s not always easy to reconcile my work and everyday life! I would say that what I miss the most is the time and above all a studio, a real studio!
I still don’t know if I’m an artist. I have always considered that calling oneself an artist is something pretentious. It is true that I create new things from an intellectual and also a subconscious act, but I feel more comfortable when I think I am creative. On the other hand, I have not studied Fine Arts and this fact makes me think that I am an outsider. However, I don’t care about everything because I’ve been painting since I was a child and I will always continue to do so. Painting has allowed me to pay rent and eat, other times it has not been like that. If I defined myself as an artist, would I change anything?
Above all, nature inspires me. I can paint something like a portrait of a person, but it will never be quite so. The animals, the plants, the mountains, the rivers, the universe, the water, the rain, all the elements and the stones, also the cells, scales, wings, spores. All of this is always present because it is Nature and I feel that humanity ceased to be a part of it a long time ago. That is why I try to bring these two worlds closer together through painting and dreams. It is like imagining a hopeful future for the planet, even though it is not actually possible.
I am not a tarot expert. I have many different decks, even an oracle of my own creation. My intention is to edit a deck of Major Arcana as soon as possible, it is a project that is taking me a long time precisely because I understand the tarot in my own way. And I think there is no universal way to understand it, so the fact that I am not an expert in tarot would not be a big problem because I would know my own tarot perfectly.
I think it is a language in itself, another kind of language. But I also believe that its divinatory character is a construction. When Visconti decks appeared in fifteenth-century Italy, their intention was not to guess but to memorize the hierarchies and their functions. Divination as such is much older. The current tarot brings together many characteristics of memoizable hierarchical archetypes that we now identify as tools for self-knowledge. I believe that the tarot can help us to know the things that we don’t know that we already know. It is like walking at night along a path full of brambles but illuminated by the soft glow of the full moon
I started a dream journal and loved the experience but didn’t have enough consistency to stick with it. I would love to be able to take it up again but I need a suitable environment and environment that I don’t have right now. I remember dreams from decades ago and from time to time they come back to my mind and give me the same sensations as at the time of the dream. Other times my dreams return to places I have already dreamed of, as if they wanted to finish telling stories. Somehow I keep in my memory the most relevant dreams, their sensations and what they brought me throughout my life. On the theories of dreams and their materialization in daily routines and in life, I would like to recommend the literary work of Julio Monteverde.
I try to make my relationship with the subconscious conscious when I’m awake. Creations are born from that place and we must remain attentive to their movements. For me it is like a call at any time of day or night that reveals other realities to me. Sometimes I know how to take advantage of that call and transform it into what you can understand as art. Other times it is too blinding a light that has the power to paralyze me and shows me through its light a deep and infinite darkness. It is what you can understand by anxiety.
Nature is the biggest influence I have. There are also some people and artistic movements in those influences, either because of the color in their works, because of the absence of color, because of their way of describing heaven and hell. There are too many but these are a very small sample of what I mean: Chagall, Redon, Remedios Varo, William Blake, Teresa de Ávila, El Greco, Goya, Diane Arbus, baroque music.
I’ve been under another the name Jupiter for quite a few years. This month (September 2022) I have started a new cycle that has been brewing since spring. I would like to get more light on the road and be able to keep my feet on the ground, something that has never happened in my life.
Alto Giove è tua grazia è tuo vanto il gran dono di vita immortale che il tuo Cenno sovrano mi fà Ma il rendermi poi quella già sospirata tanto Diva amorose e bella è un dono senza uguale come la tua beltà
High Jupiter it is your grace it is your pride the great gift of immortal life that your sovereign nod makes me But then making me that one already longed for so much Loving and beautiful diva it is a gift without equal like your beauty
For this reason, through Jupiter and almost by way of a “sigilo”, I intend to attract another way of seeing things without leaving aside my causality and gloom. I could have chosen Saturn and it really is what I wanted but we already know how Saturn treats already melancholic souls. I can’t afford that. Jupiter, as in the piece that Nicola Porpora (Alto Giove) composed to be performed by Farinelli, was a haven of peace in the stormy world of Felipe V. Leaving aside the stupid monarchy, Diana was a lunar goddess, daughter of Jupiter. In an astrological sense, Jupiter is associated with positive concepts such as abundance and optimism. And finally, I often say that “I live on Jupiter”, referring to the fact that I live in the clouds, that I am not attentive to reality and that I am a dreamer.
Lechuza is one of my music bands. We have started this summer of 2022 and we have just published our Demo. We are two friends making music, working with our hands on record packaging and trying to make nice videos of our songs. We are called Fantasmita and Ruda. Proceeds from sales go to an animal shelter. All the information is on our Bandcamp, and of course the music.
written by Diana Calabaza de Júpiter
Diana de Júpiter artistic training is intuitive and self taught. She prefers not to rely on any institution to interfere with her experience. Her themes hang between the dark and silent. She has worked for several Spanish publishers such as Aurora Dorada and La Felguera. Diana has had solo and group exhibitions in Spain, Mexico and the United States. She is currently preparing a complete tarot deck while painting daily.
I always knew that art would be part of my life. In one form or another. I was born in 1986 in Normandy, during my childhood I suffered from school phobia, then from anxiety disorder in adolescence. Imagination, poetry, drawing have always been a kind of protection against the chaos that reigns outside.
My father suffered from schizophrenia and my universe comes from this particular relationship with madness and disorder. In 2018 when my father committed suicide, I completely immersed myself in art. I still suffer from anxiety disorder, some days are harder than others, but one day at a time I am moving forward. Several months ago I started working with fabric. I sew human beings, nature, forests, rivers but above all I sew myself. This is what has changed in my new artistic work, I am no longer in the expression in traumas but in healing. It is much more than symbolic to sew. There is this idea of stitching up scars.
written by Alicia Lasne
In this work, which dates from 2019-2020, there is the representation of madness, of the depths.
In this work, which dates from 2020-2021, there is a kind of acceptance of madness, of the darkness of the human soul.
Then finally, my current work, where we really see the change with this desire for healing
I discovered Photomorphosis way back in 1972 while attempting to copy an illustrated article in the Times magazine article on Yves Tanguy on an office copy machine. At night, in the dark. A clandestine maneuver. Photomorphosis is the enchanting process by which an organism changes or experiences metamorphosis under the influence of light… It is a natural process in the realm of photosynthesis, photolysis, etc., indicating the importance of light on living things, akin to shedding light on the darker areas of the mind…
A Wedding in the gardens of Yemen 2021
As an external organic process entering another level of meaning, it became an internal manifestation of an evolving morphology of the psyche. Under the sway of obsessive desire, I combined the words photograph and metamorphosis to signify the photomorphic process, without realizing that such a word already existed.
Salive, Copper and Moonlight
But, further research revealed that photomorphosis was no longer used by the scientific community to denote the organic process of light-induced metamorphosis and had been replaced by photomorphogenesis. Thus, by my investigation, I have given a new meaning to the abandoned word ‘photomorphosis’… by surrealizing it. To paraphrase André Breton: photomorphosis has been given to me to make surrealist use of it. The sustained investigation of the imagination is raised to the level of delirious curiosity, by the introduction of the activity of looking inward to discover, or in effect, to shed light on, the darker areas of the mind. To illuminate becomes a perfect analogy for the photomorphic process… The depths of the imagination open, the fields widen, things become visible… and metamorphosis is inevitable.
Alusofore’s Morning 2021
I drew pictures of strange animals as a kid, tried painting as a teen, and didn’t like the smell of the oils. I did nothing really, until about 19 years old after finding an anthology of French poets… That started my writing – loved surrealist poetry. Poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard. But mainly Andre Breton. He was the most interesting and inventive of them all really. Extremely magical. These days, or more recently, Rene Char (but mainly during his surrealist beginnings). I really like Jacques Dupin (who toyed with surrealism but became even more interested in the realm of language.) I am inspired mainly by Breton’s vantage point in the mind.
We have marvelous weapons
Having abandoned the copy machine at the end of 1999, I discovered that I could do the same thing on the computer and more, using Photoshop, in color, and with more tools…
Armed and Dangerous 2019
Most everything inspires my work. All of which are very much similar to collage. Both visual and textural. A deep synthesis between my writing and my visual works. How I work these days, well, it all stems from my own real-life experiences. However automatic and mostly strange, it’s not art, really, but a further investigation of the psyche… between the real and the imaginary.
The luminous bodies meeting for the first time…
Many years ago, I actually did hear and experience that voice of pure automatism. It startled me completely. I think, once you actually hear and listen to it, it opens a door a little, which stays open, and whenever I feel the urge to write or make imagery, it just comes out. It is believed that one is always dreaming, it’s just under the layer of normal perception of reality. One just stumbles upon it accidentally and feels an inkling, a glimmer of something out of that persistent dream. Like a Deja Vu experience.
Resolution of Pleasure 2019
There are vast differences today between the different countries and their systems of belief with regard to surrealism; not to mention the differences in approach between various groups of surrealism. All this eventually led to the founding of La Belle Inutile and the 6 or so people who had problems with modern surrealism, academia, social groups, etc. Problems to be solved.
written by J Karl Bogartte
The Wedding Guests Have Arrived Cover for Philip Lamantia’s book Becoming Visible
J. Karl Bogartte, born September 8, 1944, of Dutch and Irish descent, is both an artist and poet, schooled in anthropology, photography and various esoteric traditions. He has been an active participant in international surrealism for more than 50 years, and cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. He presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bogartte, is both an artist and poet, having published eight books of poetic writings: The Mirror held Up In Darkness, The Wolf House, Secret Games, Luminous Weapons, Primal Numbers, A Curious Night For A Double Eclipse, Auré, The Spindle’s Arc, and Antibodies: A Surrealist Novella. Long aligned with international surrealism, Bogartte is also a cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. His work has appeared in the following anthologies: ANALOGON#65, Melpomene, Hydrolith #1 and #2, La vertèbre et le rossignol #4, Peculiar Mormyrid #2, Paraphilia, Silver Pinion and The Fiend online journal.
When I chose to fill my life with artistic creation… I was only an adolescent. I remember the moment. well, I was 14 years old and felt suddenly consumed by a desire, a need to draw… Since when I have been using all the artistic mediums within my reach: drawing, painting, embroidery, collage. A part of me remains with that adolescent eagerness to discover and create in an artistic sense.
While having attained a certain age, the desire – to live in a world of color and make artistic discoveries – is undiminished. Actually, it is probably even stronger than in my younger years. Following any period of doubt and inactivity I have always returned to my brushes and palette of colors, having a near constant need to express myself without using words.
However, in 2012 everything changed after a phone call from a doctor who told me that I was suffering from a neurodegenerative disease… After getting over the shock I sat myself down (in a wheel chair!) and threw myself into my work, which, as well as coloring my imagination, has since served as a comforting presence and safety valve for my frustrations.
My universe is dominated by color. Whether painting or embroidering, color is always as important as the subject itself. But how to speak more of one’s work? To what genre do I belong?
It has always been difficult for me to answer such questions. I would say that above all I am a figurative artist. But also, no doubt, part of the “outsider” movement.
Nature too has always inspired me. In discovering the artistic potential of embroidery, some subjects have become recurrent: mothers, black Madonna’s, mermaids, Little Red Riding Hood, Frida K.
As an illustrator I also make collages, using torn up pieces from old books, old photos, various fabrics and embroidery, and paintings… All these mediums are thus mixed to bring new life to those lives and faces long since forgotten.
My universe, year on year, is constantly renewed in an exploration of the world of childhood, color, drawings, textiles, embroidery, and painting. I work in the silence of forgotten faces and feelings… repairing and trying to retrieve them, sewing them into re-existence, reclaiming and bringing them back… with delicacy, gently, soaking them in color
I had the desire to paint and draw very early on but I didn’t practice much because I didn’t have any confidence in myself. I was not attracted by academic drawing, I was self-taught and I did not know how to draw. It took me a long time to find my way, I had to hold on, experiment, let go and everything went better when I understood that I should no longer try to have control but welcome the unexpected and appropriate it. Then began a dialogue with the invisible
Then I use pencils, gouache or pastels to give shape to these presences that appear in the material. For the black and white drawings, they are made with charcoal and black chalk in automatic drawing.
I work with fluid materials to begin with, such as water, ink and watercolor, because these mediums are particularly conducive, as far as I am concerned, to revealing the beyond appearances, they help me to cross borders and to access parallel worlds.
Concerning the cyanotype technique, it is an old photographic printing or reproduction technique, I use it to make multiple prints in limited series of some of my drawings: it consists in putting on a sheet of paper a chemical product which is sensitive to light, one puts on the sheet a negative of the photo which one wishes to reproduce (for me a negative of my drawings which I prepare myself), it is necessary to put it then in the sun a few minutes then to pass the sheet under water and there always appears in blue a reproduction of the drawing drawn from the negative. I particularly appreciate the blue obtained with this technique which is close to the dreamlike world.
My inspiration can come from everyday things, I like to look at where appearances fall and see the magic in a realistic environment. I am for example very inspired by tomato slices, when I cut up tomatoes while preparing food I marvel at what I see inside each slice, I find the tomato particularly inhabited by a wonderful world, hence the origin of my Tomato Heart drawings.
I also made a series of drawings from photos of the surface of the river, these photos were for me like a freeze-frame of a story that the river tells or perhaps this river water is a bearer of memory, that of the countries and times it has crossed? So I drew from these photos to give shape to what I saw appearing.
Nature, women, animals or hybrid creatures, spirituality are the main sources of inspiration for my paintings, all set in a dreamlike universe. As in tales and fables, my drawings try to give us back the sense of wonder and to open doors to a magical world where everything is possible
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.
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
ArtistAlicia 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 Lasnesewing 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.
Mitchell Pluto 