The three basic styles I work with as an artist are: whimsical impressionism, mythical realism, and intuitive abstract expressionism. I like to go from one style to the next so as to balance out the intense emotional experience of an abstract or mythical piece with the more childlike joy of whimsical impressionism. I aspire to be keep experimenting and creating in new ways each time I paint to keep it fun and interesting. I listen and sometimes dance to music while I paint usually for hours at a time. When I'm painting an intuitive piece, I usually listen to ambient music such as Brian Eno and Michael Andrews or the brilliant Jazz improvisations of Chick Corea or Keith Jarrett. These musical styles help me to get into a trance which allows the unconscious and spiritual material to better express itself on the canvas. When I'm painting whimsical pieces, I'll play Flamenco, Gypsy Jazz, Hawaiian, or French Accordion music to loosen me up into a more playful mood. My favorite medium is acrylic because of its bright colors and quick-drying times which allows me to create several pieces at a time, get them out of the studio and into the homes of collectors and ready to exhibit at shows. Also, acrylics are not as messy as oils, charcoal and pastels. However, I do love to occasionally use oils, pastels, watercolor, India Ink, pencil, charcoal and mixed media. My purpose to create art is to make myself happier and become more fully alive and whole. I also thoroughly enjoy that others love and buy my work. I have several collector fans who say my work makes them feel happy or provokes contemplation. I see my style as both childlike and adult at the same time and eagerly anticipate growing as an artist and continuing to share my new creations with others.
Insights about making intuitive abstract and mythical art:
As I've experienced letting go and painting whatever I feel, allowing the colors and movements to complement and harmonize in whatever fashion feels right, images will start to appear "accidentally". Images, or perhaps sensations too. It may take a few times. In fact, it almost always does! I'll step away, look at it from several angles, sometimes turn the canvas upside down, sideways, and voila'! I'll "see" it! It will make me gasp, delight, marvel. I'll feel as if I've stumbled upon an ancient artifact and am now simply clearing away the dust, allowing the treasure to be revealed...what was buried to come to the light.
When making abstract intuitive art, I get the strong sense that an image (or images) that has appeared on the canvas has bubbled up from inside the buried places of my unconscious. I experience this work as a revelation and as it comes to light. It's as if I'm becoming more whole in the process of spontaneously creating/allowing the images to be revealed. It really confirms what Carl Jung discovered about how we must make the unconscious conscious in order to "individuate", and as I'm now discovering from some of his more obscure writings, to basically prepare ourselves to "return to the Light World". Now, that, of course is a very strange and controversial Gnostic mystery. In fact, throughout history, the Christian church tried to suppress these unorthodox Gnostic understandings because these "interior oriented" spiritual views threatened the status quo.
The more I experience this intuitive painting process, the more I can see the ancient Gnostics and Jung were right. In order to handle the Light, we must be made ready for it...we must allow the unconsicious to become consious and experience ourselves as fully whole and liberated as individuals. Like the poet, Emily Dickinson observed: "The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind."
Now, what abstract art is teaching me lately is that all of life can be approached as if we are making these spontaneous paintings. I have been looking at my daily life this way. "Paint the day", so to speak, and dust off what's "coming through", blend, harmonize, ask myself what is emerging here? And, as I ask, I'll see it and gasp, delight, and marvel. I'll feel more whole, more connected and empowered despite all the many ugly, dark, painful, uncomfortable parts. In fact, having this philosophical approach to daily life ("love of wisdom" is the meaning of the word, "philosophy"), will make the painful parts tolerable and even, by some grace, transmutable. Perhaps this is what was meant by "the consolation of philosophy". Anyway, when all that fails, I'll just come back to humor and laugh when I see the comic in things. That works pretty good too.