In my figurative art, I don’t see the figure as something to be copied but as an event that’s shaped by rhythm, gesture and emotion. I grew up close to nature and think of my painted and drawn lines as threads and fibres, veins and roots, feeding and defining the boundaries of colours, which are the emotions describing an inner life, memories and connections.
Each painting can be thought of almost like a conversation. As I work on a piece, whilst I usually have an overall concept that I’d like to express, the details and the manner in which that idea is expressed is often only discovered whilst I’m actually working on it. Some pieces end up looking more like physical time-lapses, with the figures moving on the canvas as they get painted then repainted, whilst others could be seen as long-exposure captures of emotional changes, with the shifting colours both mirroring and guiding my mood whilst I work.
Magdalena studied Artistic Textiles at the C.K. Norwid Art College in Lublin, Poland and earned her master’s degree in Painting from the nearby M.C. Skłodowska University. After living and exhibiting in England and Switzerland, she settled in Asturias in northern Spain, where she continues to develop her work. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and included in group exhibitions worldwide. Her work is represented by several international galleries and is held in collections around the world.
My painting can be understood best when looked at with an understanding of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas of Maitri and Tonglen. (Maitrī loving-kindness) and Tonglen (giving and taking) are two related practices in Buddhist traditions, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, focused on cultivating compassion and kindness. Maitrī involves cultivating a warm and benevolent attitude towards oneself and others, while Tonglen is a meditation practice that involves breathing in suffering and breathing out relief, compassion, or loving-kindness.
I didn’t start out as a kid practicing this meditation. I was adopted as an infant from South Korea when I was 3 months old. And my parents weren’t Buddhists. My dad told me he used to practice transcendental meditation as an adult, but never taught me how. I came to it, through wanting to connect more deeply with my Korean heritage. That was about 10 years ago.
I didn’t start, wanting to merge my meditation practice and my painting practice. But because of the visual nature of tonglen, the imagery was a naturally on my mind. And had no idea what I wanted my thesis to be. So, both created a synergy that helped me inadvertently heal, and explore the different relationships in my past and in my present. By the end of my graduate studies, my thesis was: Painting and Meditation: Paths to healing. I even tried my thesis out in the community. I had around 10 women come to learn tonglen meditation. And to use the imagery from their meditation, as the subject for their artwork. They painted a suffering and the opposite of that. They used photos, to help inform their work. And then they talked about the transformation. It was a beautiful and empowering workshop.
I love this tiny painting. It started out as a quick study as nothing serious. But I really just fell into the paint and managed to keep the essence of her being lost in what looked like to me as a state of pleasure or like she’s making a wish. Color tends to go anywhere, when I don’t think about it so much. I just let my hand choose and place it where it wants to go. It’s very instinctual and intuitive. I like not having to think so much. It’s more of an emotional application. Lately I’m in love with the soft plumes of color and line quality I can get with watercolor. I will paint a person just for the softness they have in their hair or body.
After placing myself in tonglen. It was shocking to discover that I had never really jumped off the hamster wheel of life to even talk or address the ambiguous loss I’d carried for years in my body and psyche. I had never even talked to anyone about how hard it was to miss a family I had never met. Or the woman who carried me and birthed me. But the loss is real. This meditation of compassion gave me the space to fully sit with that grief and actively tend to it. I seemed to have just fleshed it out more fully in my paintings.
I made my very complex and heavy feelings into a visualization in my mind. Then used those as a springboard for narrative paintings. Turning trauma into a concrete painting. Painting has played a part helping me make of sense this unique journey. Of what had missing pieces and lies. I’ve created a story with a start, beginning and ending, that made sense to me. Not the dominant narrative of the adoption industry, or lies or mystery surrounding my adoption. Not adoption from the parents perspective. Not adoption from a Christian perspective. But one that comes from historical facts and felt memories from my body and how I felt about being adopted and having gone through so much with so little.
“The Baby Catchers” 2015 Oil on wood panel 32″ 5/8 x 49′ 3/4
In 2016, I saw the photojournalism of these displaced refugee children at the gate in Kilis, Turkey. People were being shot as they tried to cross out of their war torn home of Syria. This photo captures kids becoming displaced people. Being a displaced person has made me an international citizen. Painting directly from the photo while changing small things like the gate colors to infuse America’s presence. I made the girl in pink to look like me as a toddler. I did change the baby’s eyes to look directly at the viewer. I was on a roll here, moving my meditation onto strangers I didn’t know. People on the news. I just so happened to be able to relate.
“At the border Gate in Kilis,Turkey” 2016. Oil on canvas. 41″ x 41″.
In ‘Feeding Time’ subject play with ideas of being nourished in captivity in an unnatural environment at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. I was trying to express the absurdities, dangerous issues in American culture and realities of parenting in 2017. Child trafficking, abuse and the ridiculous standards and roles that are expected and fulfilled by mothers. Letting in those issues and risks, gave me a broader range of character to play with which was really fun. I really enjoyed designing the composition to create this cramped, foreboding space.
“Feeding Time” Oil on canvas. 67 3/4″ x 57″
Dancing brings me great joy. For me, It’s wildly feminine, spontaneous, expressive and cathartic. Dancing to DJ’d dance parties helped me get through Covid. So, when I found a photo of people doing tantric dance in the Netherlands. To me, this painting signifies freedom joy and sensual pleasures and a trust in the feminine and masculine moving in spontaneous harmony. I painted it for a public art viewing in downtown space. I wanted to make something that signaled the end of social distancing. At the same time, I liked that the men were letting the women lead them through space. It signaled to me a trust. Which, for in America, the Supreme Court had just reversed Roe v. Wade.
This dance was photographed in a very brightly lit ballroom with a bare wood floors, with random music stands and billowy curtains in the background. The color was too white, too bright and the figures were getting lost. So, I decided that blue would be a perfect color. I had been swimming and diving in the Lakes in Montana, and realized that blue of the water would be perfect balance to all the activity and detail in the figures. It is like they’re dancing underwater or in the sky, free flowing.
“The Tantric Dancers” Oil on canvas. 40″ X 60″
I painted a still from a YouTube video of a young Korean woman eating Korean noodles. Her name is Dorothy.
“Dorothy” (from her Mukbang video) watercolor on paper. 7″x7″
Mukbang is the art of eating Korean food as a performance for all those who click on the video. I enjoy watching these videos. And they are highly addictive and always inspire me to make Korean food. I’m not one for K-Dramas, but I am highly drawn to the Visual and audible feast. Plus I love seeing what South Koreans are eating.
I encountered difficulties in collecting factual information on Lyapkalo’s thoughts to write about. The following is a correspondence with Viktor Lyapkalo. I’m grateful that Viktor made time to reply. Before sharing our correspondence, I got Lyapkalo’s consent to share his thoughts on art.
Socialist Realism is a strong realistic school that takes its origins from the old Imperial Academy of Arts where Serov Vrubel Kustodiev Repin studied.
The political background of socialism is another story, but first it is a realistic school that still serves us as an example of gorgeous paintings of strong drawing.
Thanks to socialist realism, we have preserved a strong Russian school in the Academy of Arts, where very talented students who know how to draw and write still study
Artists of socialist realism Gerasimov use layer of layers still serves us as an example of pictorial skill and excellent drawing.
Their political paintings are already a tribute to the times, but they achieve a high artistic level in their execution. While in other countries, in other art schools, teaching underwent changes under the influence of new versions of new trends in art, our school, thanks to socialist realism, training remained at the same level as at the Imperial Academy of Arts, therefore our students can all write well, I have good painting qualities.
I believe you need to narrate what you love and what you like and then it will be sincere. Those works that are made for sale without love are immediately visible. They are fake and without a soul. Of course, my preferences are not for everyone. I look primarily at picturesque points of view when I narrate a painting with women. I really understand Renoir because of how he painted women. Skin is more like an onion flower that has all shades of colors.
I am 62 years old and I live in Calabria, in the ancient Magna Graecia. I am harsh and solitary, wild, introverted, anarchic and autistically proud like my land, which is full of stormy seas, turquoise and crystalline seas, and rugged and desolate mountains, very colorful and rich in lakes and impenetrable woods. I have been painting, drawing, photographing, cutting, sewing, gluing professionally since 1995, since I decided that I wanted to breathe art every moment of my life.
I like to experiment with everything I have at hand,mixing incompatible, different materials in absurd ways. I like to scratch and dirty my photos. Sew them together and with my paintings. I like to sew my paintings endlessly.
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I never know what I’ll do, what of new or old I’m going to create. I don’t like to plan anything, I want things to happen as and when they have to happen, I don’t do anything at all…. I put on some music, maybe with a good glass of red wine…. I sit at my work table where I have all my colors, my beloved books, my photos, my colors….and the magic happens every time.
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After a while I start to draw dots, lines, knotted lines, I choose the colors….and so on….it’s wonderful what happens every time. It’s a continuous catharsis, a going inside myself, and always opening new doors to go deeper and deeper.
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To know, to discover and open parts of me that were sealed and that now by magic I was able to open and penetrate. Art has been my autistic way to be in the world, the only way I know and have to communicate my words, what I have in my mind and heart. It is the dance that I have chosen to dance in harmony with my breathing.
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It is my freedom, the freedom that is essential for me to live, to feel sincere and true. For the first 14 years of my ”professional” career I drew and painted only in black and white with rivers of ink and lots and lots of paper. I love black indian ink, and its thousand shades…..they are like the thousand shades of my soul, they are like the clouds that hide the faint glow of the moon….like the thousand thoughts that crowd the mind before it can choose the right word.
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I started drawing frantically and joyfully on many many zines and magazines from all over the world, I collaborated with noise, metal, industrial, techno music bands….did a lot of mail art…drew for everyone, everything. I have never stopped since then, obviously because I like it, because it is the job I have chosen, it is my life, the life I have chosen to live freely. I never stop looking for freedom in everything I do, it is essential to me. Art is freedom, dance, joy, pain, art is life.
The transition to color was an obvious, natural necessity, and collage too. Collage is an extraordinary bridge to and with infinite potential, it is a labyrinth, a puzzle that never ceases to amaze me. I love experimenting, measuring myself and having fun with everything that attracts my attention, it helps me grow artistically, to discover many new games.
My inspirations are many, many….. my beloved books, underground comics, fashion magazines, so much contemporary art, medieval and Renaissance art….Osho , Aurobindo and Mère, Sara Vaughan, Patty Waters, Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman, Can, Nicke Drake and Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell…. Diamanda Galas and Joel Peter Witkink…. many, much more… the laughter of my friends, the noises of the street, my beloved cats, the winter sea and mountain lakes.
…and of course the tarot cards….I have been studying, reading and painting tarot cards since I was a boy….I love them and I can’t stop studying them, contemplating them, collecting them. For the International Tarot Museum I have created 5 tarot decks and in these days I will start the sixth. I hope and want to continue to create and be free as I am today
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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.
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
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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
The land has spirit and we are the land…The rock pulses with energy and movement that we cannot detect…the rock sometimes shows himself and becomes recognizable like a face. The land is what we are, the land keeps us alive, the trees speak to each other about the land and share its nutrients, they live out their lives without any help from man. They are a community and we show them respect. Then there is the everlasting sky all others live beneath him with its many moods and gifts ,we offer prayer to all four directions. We say we don’t think about these things… we know all these things.
Permanent installation at Manitou Island Post Office
Growing up in Mchigeeng First Nation we were poor we didn’t know we were but didn’t feel like it…we had clean clothes food toys…No running water, no phone no inside toilet but we were happy…today I wonder about young kids seeing things on Facebook and tv like friends having parties, new cloths new toys, new this new that…big fancy houses…they look around their homes and community what do they see… What do you see ?
Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. Back then this was hard to believe, since the water was so plentiful, so pure, and so full of energy, nutrition and spirit. Today we have to buy pure water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just empty liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford
Even the spirit, which belongs to the Great Mystery, returns to its source. Some of our people say this journey takes place on a path of stars. Others describe the spirit’s return to the Great Mystery as a drop of water falling into the ocean. It becomes a part of everything again as the light of a candle becomes one with the fire of the sun. That’s why we can sometimes feel our loved ones in the warm air, or hear them in a bird’s song…or even sense them in the…wind. We feel them in certain areas or times of the year,, we sense them and think of them and dream of them. Sometimes they talk to us in the dream but most times it’s just good to see them…we wake up thinking of them ,The dream can last a day or we think of the dream for many years…yes they are with us..
Guardian of the Lake
A man by the lake wanted to live forever. A huge fish came about out of the water and pulled him in. The fish had spent his entire life looking for freedom from this world. He told the man we will go to the door of eternity, you will step through one way and I will go through the other way. This sounded good to the man. They both went through the door. There said the fish …I now will live a normal life and you will live forever. The man had become the fish. “Stop Wait” he said but the man who was a fish could not hear. To this day the guardian of the lake searches for the man who died a normal death many many years ago. The guardian of the lake, a huge ancient fish.
Mindemoya man
The Mindemoya man…A giant fish appeared to some men on the shore of Mindemoya lake ,they grabbed the fish and were surprised how the fish let himself be caught…they took the fish to the village and it began to cry like a human…A lonely woman came out to see what’s going on…she recognized the crying as her long lost husbands voice…she called out his name then the great fish began to speak “I was once a man but was turned into a fish, by a witch, because I rejected her…and my wife who I see now I cannot be with anymore” The people became afraid and dragged the big fish back to the water…The woman ran after them and jumped in the water with the fish…they were never seen again…next year the waters were teaming with fish and for many years after that.
I AM the Land
Nobody wants anyone to leave, We’re just trying to protect the land and waters for future generations, for all . 95% of British Columbia is unceded native territory as the treaty process for British Columbia started in the 1990s and has yielded only three treaties to date. Enshrined in Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms Section 25A is the Royal Proclamation which recognizes and affirms indigenous title to land and requires treaties in order to legally possess. Where as no treaty exists those who willingly or inadvertently set themselves upon these lands must remove themselves forthwith. Canada is in violation of their own laws.
The Shaking Tent Ceremony by Norval Morrisseau
The Ojibway Indians had what we call a jeesekun, a shaking tent, or wigwam, where a medicine man does conjuring. There were two kinds of shaking tents. One had its power from the water, the other from the wind or earth. Some Ojibway built their shaking tent in the water, in order to receive power from it. Eight poles were cut and placed in a circle, and each pole was driven about two feet into the ground to keep the tent firm. Two hoops were placed inside the wigwam to keep the poles in position and would be covered with deer hide, birchbark or canvas. Rattles of tin or caribou hoof were placed inside to make a rattling noise.
Norval MorrisseauPaintingDuncan Neganigwane Pheasant’s Notes on Norval MorrisseauPainting
All the Ojibway would gather and sit in a circle facing the shaking tent. This took place at night. The conjurer would disrobe, have his hands tied up and crawl inside the wigwam. He would not speak but would have one Indian, or all, start asking questions, whatever each one wished to know. As the conjurer crawled inside, the tent itself began to shake and the rattles were heard. The Ojibway believe a medicine wind blows from heaven in the tent and that is how it shakes. All the dogs tied close by began to yelp and were afraid but the people were not, for it does not affect human beings. What come into the wigwam to sing or talk are the water god Misshipeshu and other spirits of bears, serpents and animals, thunderbirds, the evil Windigo, the morning star, the sky, water, earth, sun and moon, also female and male sex organs. Each speaks in his own language but we have an interpreter whom we call Mikkinnuk, a small turtle who is the Devil himself, who interprets for all these beings. So let it be known now and then remain a secret; it is the Devil himself who is the interpreter.
Norval MorrisseauDuncan Neganigwane Pheasant
The Ojibway were given this shaking tent to do both good and evil. A lot of people of the Ojibway tribe used this conjuring tent to conjure people but a lot also used it to cure people, to find lost things, to defend the people from evil sorcerers, or bad medicine-men, and to know about the future.
Duncan Neganigwane Pheasant Silent Hunter a living ghost that eats with it’s eyes Mitchell Pluto Collection
Duncan Neganigwane Pheasant, Dedicated to Norval Morriseau on the anniversary of his birth March 14 1932. Spirit Warrior 18×24 canvas
Manitoulin island is a place of ancient spirits lying in wait within the cliffs and deep inland lakes. A man with a spirit face looks out across the cliffs as he paints on them. A weary hunter warrior realizes he now is a stranger in this magnificent stone garden He is a shadow man a shadow warrior.
The invisible man from the door of the unknown. He hears the pounding of the drum and heads to it. Modern day Ojibwe and Odawa men sing the songs of old. He stands beside them but they cannot see him He is a spirit warrior.
Duncan Neganigwane Pheasant is a painter from the M’Chigeeng First Nation. He started painting in high school using colours and techniques inspired by Norval Morrisseau and other Woodland style artists. His grandfather, Ambrose Pheasant, told stories that were also a great influence on his artwork. Duncan uses his images to interpret Ojibwe legends and stories that surround the history of his ancestors and Manitoulin Island. Those legends which inspire his work are inscribed on the back of each original painting and a printed copy of the legend will be included with each purchase.
Born in Russia, of Russian and Armenian descent, with both parents artists-designers who were often working on their projects from home, I was surrounded by art books, architectural models, paintings, and design projects. I was feeling very much a creatively equal part in this artistic household, learning practical skills from an early age and getting ad-hoc art history lessons from my dad: I loved nothing more than sculpting objects, drawing imaginary worlds and creatures for hours, taking myself away on fantastic travels aided by pen and paper.
I started receiving formal art school education from the age of 12. I then went on to study at St Petersburg Stiglitz Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, taking what was considered a more practical Interior Design degree there as one of the youngest students on the course. Having grown more and more disillusioned with the political situation in Russia, I had an opportunity to continue my education in the UK, where I decided to switch my degree to Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton, a beautiful seaside town. Having graduated with a First Class Honours degree, I had a great chance to continue onto a 3 year postgraduate course at the Royal Academy Schools in London straight afterwards, eventually settling there for 15 years with my family, before moving to Spain.
My art practice since has encompassed a lot of different mediums: from drawing and painting to making art videos, experimental website design, creative writing, sound design, exhibition curation, and interior design. I’ve collaborated with my husband Daniel, (also an artist and writer,) on The Unstitute – a conceptual art website/online art laboratory which includes various online gallery spaces with monthly curated exhibitions, one-off projects, artists’ residencies, and a ‘zine. We developed a unique digital aesthetic with complex cultural dialogues, promoted and exhibited video artworks by over 130 artists from 33 countries, connecting to a global network of artists. The Unstitute also produced a number of independent short and feature films screened internationally. The Unstitute is free to visit and explore: www.theunstitute.org
My creative inspiration lies in all that excites me to try my hand at myself, a deeper exploration of my interests through practicing a new medium, learning and understanding the character of this practice and developing my own language in it. The themes I have looked deeply into are: French New Wave cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Varda), post war Italian cinema (Fellini, Pasolini, Antonioni) and existential philosophy (Sartre, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard) which influenced a lot of video works, surrealist paintings (Carrington, Varo, Ernst), and the writings of Kafka and Deleuze – as well as other numerous sources. The fantastic architecture of Gaudi has been referenced in my design work, classical and experimental dance music has inspired my own sound design projects and developed my sensibilities. I like to mix disciplines, and I don’t feel the pressure of tying myself to making one type of thing; when it becomes a chore it lacks a particular kind of energy, an excitement to harness the subject, and to communicate in that language it needs to be left alone to breathe for a while.
Having come full circle, I’m now developing ideas through drawing again. Drawing, a very immediate medium, enables me to play with the material and with my mind. I use various surfaces around our old Catalan house with a 100 years worth of thin plaster washes that are rich in texture, cracks and chips, a detailed history of use that is translated into some faint, random marks, by rubbing the surface with graphite on paper. Sometimes, I close my eyes and choose colours and draw shapes at random, or I just scribble something on paper absentmindedly. Thus, I’m presented with a series of opportunities for ‘communication’ with the work. I get into a meditative, slightly detached state, letting expectations go as much as possible before letting the drawing speak to me, to open my mind to suggestions. I see frottage – the initial rubbing – as a basic skin or gauze that is tied over an already existing image; it’s a game of recovery of the image.
It’s like the whole of humanity, the natural world, the cosmos, all my sources and histories are squashed together in a tight bundle of stuff that constantly mutates and changes in a continuous movement, a dance that is hidden under the surface of drawing paper. You never know what you are going to find by scratching the surface. By gently drawing on this skeleton of marks, repeating its forms over and over, I start slowly beefing up the initial image, or I take layers off, exposing that image underneath, akin to archaeology. I can recognise various marks, characters, memories of small details like a gesture or a shine on the nose, and the stuff from daily life starts to poke through this initial wild collage of bits, merging and mutating in my unfocused eyes. By gently excavating a partial image with a soft brush as it were, by gentle strokes, I nurture that image into the light, extracting, distilling it from the initial marks. As if stroking the skin of paper over and over, massaging the organs, getting the inner machinery as it were to start kicking into action. This process produces a clearer idea of what the image is and what it wants; it starts working itself out, the cogs fall into place. When I feel that an image I’m working on is becoming independent, it starts constructing itself with that inner machinery confidently and becomes almost confrontational in its new independence, then my work is done. Art for me is an organic process which continues evolving in the eyes of the beholder.
Mycelial Visions is a work that I have been maturing for months and that deals with the wonders and mysteries that the Fungi Kingdom contains, a name that is used to designate a group of eukaryotic organisms where fungi or mushrooms, molds and yeasts are found. This kingdom is one of the 5 great ones that make up others, such as animalia, plantae, protista or monera, having very own characteristics that distinguish it from these others due to its taxonomy and complex life cycles.
Specifically, the so-called mushrooms of the Psilocybe family caught my attention and their role as sacred psychotropics (hallucinogenic or neurotropic) in vast cultures, with records of this use, from the Paleolithic (Siberia, Sahara and Spain) to the present day. The power that these have to expand the mind and open unsuspected portals is well known, and that it has a certain analogy with what Eliphas Levi explained, regarding the 3 states to know the secrets of the universe, such as the embryonic state, dreams and delirium.
Thus, since the dawn of animism, these mushrooms have revealed, with the guidance of healers and shamans, that which is invisible and also ineffable, since those who experience these trips cannot express or relate what they have experienced on these trips to what is supposedly the depth of being and soul. These mushrooms usually occur in the dung of animals and it is plausible that prehistoric nomads followed herds not only for their meat but also to collect these mushrooms that were found growing in the feces of the herds. Among these mushrooms are the Psilocybe Mairei in North Africa, Psilocybe Cyanescens, present in Europe, America and Oceania, or Psilocybe Zapotecorum in Mesoamerica, to name three of the most recognized.
They are heterotrophic organisms, that is, they acquire their nutrients from abroad. Their form of reproduction is by spores and they have specific anatomical structures for their production, such as asci (contain ascospores) and basidia (with basidiospores). In fungi, reproduction can be asexual (without formation of a fruiting body) as well as sexual. Like the other kingdoms, they have different shapes, colors and sizes. Its habitat and location varies according to species, being able to grow in treetops or at the foot of it, as well as on rocks or soil, preferably where there is humidity and shade.
written by Enrique de Santiago. The art works are acrylic and ink on 300 gm Conqueror paper. Each painting and poem is a door.
FULLNESS A secret freedom opens through a crack that you can barely see. Rumi The morning and its ancient mystery with his new cycle embracing my vertebral calm with dawn light steep in aerial stays of a non-Euclidean flight and its fertile messaging that awakens the annelids to caress my future memory.
CONCILIATION There are times when all the accumulated anxiety and effort they rest in the infinite indolence and repose of nature. Henry David Thoreau I have heard the incessant whisper of the maitenes and felt its impetuous root that sings its light music mounted on the invisible verticality of design that escapes geometrically by the high pendulum cusp where I found the voice of the origin so I became a body in the bark adding myself to the essential channel that pulsates in the hollow where the bird flies with his outburst of winged love that awakens the astral eyelid and light the new dawn.
DOWN From the labyrinth of white meats where the filaments fractionate the divine eye the wise thread emerges from the molten magma before time.
DREAMS in the belly of the stone the dragon’s breath is hidden and in every cosmic cycle stir your energy that moves the suns and their destinies. You’ll know when the word goes on in that object that radiates silent voices by a demiurge who lost love in a vortex in that surprising weather.
HUGGING THE BELLY Diverse waters nest in the hidden embryonic embraces where the blade of time pick up the promise made to the stem in that sacred way. And I saw a new way and their metals hugged tightly the sign of the night dropping urgent shadows as field dams one upright and down in his immobility.
LIGHT The universe came down to my domain Opening the lights before precarious those who entered In the bones of my soul. Light of the hidden.
SEEING EYE the flesh of god opened the sky and my inner eye saw the route of the serpents.
HEAVENLY LANDSCAPES In the surroundings of the uranic gem the voices of the magicians are raised that bear ancestral flowers to heal the wounds of oblivion.
REVELATION There was his high imponderable crown on the distinguished and lukewarm verticality of the mystery without leaving a shadow in the mirror of the high magistracy of the verb pouring her violet love towards his moist horizon and restlessly embracing your silhouette that I don’t know That’s how I saw you behind the meanders of destiny in the sudden revelation of the morning birds Will you be the trail to be followed in unknown times? perhaps I will drink of your honey under the sign of the equinox coming As soon as you feel your eyelids full of the light of your redemption and rest the incandescent pearl that comes down from the dew this will be the floral beginning of the silent explosion like the one that leaves the pollen in the aerial possibilities while I await your coming. Someday they’ll die out under the rust the gears that bind us to reality.
DIRECTIONS My constellations that guide me pushing my mild matter in this immense sum of fiery spheres and finite inside the womb of mystery with its unsuspected breath of flowers because as above so below since nebulae have their own pistils and here I am with my steps apprehended waved and sacramented right and wrong taking up the path dictated by the stars smiling under high serene clouds looking for other paths that will bring a new hand to dream.
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
Mitchell Pluto 