The Advice Columnist

Take a generous helping of Chaos (This is Life)…

Add your thoughts, daydreams, all you've learned…

And try to stay upright and balanced…

With the full awareness of the meaninglessness of it all.

Salut!
"Unsubstantial Things"
colored pencil, watercolor, ink, acrylic
09-14-13

The Bear

04-04-13
colored pencil, ink

The bear is contained within an abstraction, a cage that contains and does not contain what the bear really is (even the bear doesn't know --and this is the point). Are the elves archers? Are they doctors? The arrogance of a surgically precise Eros! They might strike the abstraction --and miss Life. How will the bear escape this confinement? With rage or a lumbering boredom ("I've had enough of this!)?

Is the bear immune to Eros' darts? …And really, no: The bear IS Eros. And we the archers and our arrows, like gnats, swarm in parallel before the large animal who inexplicably dances before us unaware, lost in the pleasure of his divinity. And hopefully we are enchanted too despite our swarming and because of our dancing!

Bon dimanche et bonne journée!

Comings and Goings

"There is No Void"
27 Feb, 2013
watercolor, collage

Just when you think you've penetrated some mystery and are finally seeing Life at it's most impersonal and natural state…voilà! …here you are again: staring at your face in the mirror! Just try to sneak up on yourself sometime… it seems impossible. Making Art, for me, is a search for these types of surprises and the uncomfortable realities AND the comfort of homecoming that ensue. So there!
Bonne journée mes amis!

The Philosophers

from the sketchbook this morning:

"IN DAYS OF YORE!
Two Philosopher Foxes pace the Egyptian plain. One studies the sky. The other studies the ground. Each other: they know not! Inevitably they collide. In their distracted states each is confirmed in his argument that this is exactly what Nature intends, ordains and requires: one bumps.

Room for Waiting

"The Waiting Room"
Oct. 30, 2011
collage, mixed media

detail

A toast then to those moments (or are they only yesterdays?) where we find ourselves possessed of the duty to wait for something that hasn't arrived yet. These moments could be the spaces between words or the spaces between our idea of what our lives are and someone else's idea of what our lives will be.

Who is this "someone?" God? Our future self, or selves? The Fates or the Furies?

Here's a happy fellow. His knapsack is full but not too heavy. He has a companion who sleeps comfortably at his feet. He looks out of the waiting room window. It's an old space with a worn linoleum floor. Perhaps he just had some tea or sake. Or maybe that vase needs to be refreshed.

Inside and Outside don't seem very different; they are just opposite sides of a common wall. So we wait and we not-wait… the two halves of the whole darn thing!

Bonne journée!