Just for the record- Updated art's a'comin'. Last I checked, I was eight hundred and something in the queue...

A couple other relevant links:

My Deviance

My Epilogue

My Space

Something About You: Auto-biographize myself? Here? They gotta be kidding. (I'm pretty sure there's not enough room here for the Mexican gunboats story, too...)

I've grown tired of trying to explain who and what I am to others, and how I came to be all of those things, and all that I have been through, and all of the places and people I have been in the past. My spirituality is Zen, although I rabidly eschew dogma in all it's forms, and was deeply disappointed to learn how deeply Buddhism drapes itself in dogmas, so I suppose you can't really call it a religion for me. Never the less, it is in Zen that I find my center, and it is Zen which has taught me that all that I have been is both neccessary and irrelevant to all that I currently am. But I guess that's not very informative, as bios go, it it? When I had to do it for my own site, I just wrote up an interview between my objective and artistic selves, and I think it went rather well. (And it shows my latent schizophrenic side, too!) If you were in a hurry, you'd have already scrolled past all of this stuff anyways, and if you skip it and like the art, you'll be back to read it later, right? So here's that:

OM(Objective Me): How did you first become interested in art?

AM(Artistic Me): That's like asking me how I learned to swim- (nervous laughter) I just always could. My father was an advertising illustrator, back before he fell out of reality, very mainstream. Newspaper ads for shoes and hats and ladies' stockings... Sort of Darrin Stevens. (Ironic, since my mother was a witch...) But mom was an artist too. She painted, first in temperas, and later in oils. Dad's influence was subtle- by the time I was old enough to recognize him as an individual, he'd lost his mind, and he never really actively encouraged either my sister, or myself in much of anything except Constitutionalism and 'Fight the Man' kind of stuff. Mom on the other hand, was more hippie, less beatnic, and she was always about some kind of artsy-craftsy something or other- macrame, for a while, pottery... and that rubbed off. I remember making GodsEyes' at some kindergarden community-center summer class when I was very very young. Oddly, (and she'll be surprised when she reads this I imagine,) my sister influenced me as much or more than either of my folks. She painted this amazing thing in a high school art class- a fantastic, rainbow-colored seahorse thing... And my colors and themes have always kind of reflected that one painting. (See Karla? I never meant to be a pest- You were just the only role-model I really had! (chuckle)

OM: Did either of them- or your sister- did they ever give you any specific lessons, or advice?

AM: I remember when I was about seven, my dad told me that if I wanted to learn to draw, I should trace. I should trace everything I saw, and every artist I liked, until I understood the shapes I was trying to create. That was good advice, and it was repeated by my instructors at the Art Institute. I'm still tracing today- although a voice in my head tells me that's cheating- but it's a great way of studying a subject, and when there's a layer of vellum or foggy mylar between your eyes and the subject, it leaves a nice big opening for your creative mind to step in.

OM: Let me step backward with you again- when and how did Fantasy come into the picture?

AM: That, too, was kinda always with me. I can remember The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from before I could read. Also, A.A. Milne, and Madelene L'Engle, and things like that- Fantasies published as 'Yearling Books'... I loved them, and many of those are considered great classics of fantasy now. I told you I was a gypsy kid- we travelled a lot, and reading was one of the few real solid things my parents ever gave to me. We used to pass books around by the light of a Coleman lantern. (That smell has strong associations for me.) We read The Hundred Acre Wood, and A Wrinkle in Time, and The Fellowship of the Ring... I loved words from a very early age. Used to steal the family copies of Shakespeare when was 7 or 8. (We always had a lot of books.) I think really that Fantasy is more of a foundation than a diversion- As kids, our creative minds go wild, and we can believe in almost anything. It's Realism that we grow into, and from there, into Abstraction as we try to return to that Child-Mind. When you look at Fantasy Artists today, I think you can see the age at which Art really took hold of them- The darker artists express pains and fears, and often, there's a cynicism behind the big hairy pointy monsters... Like, 'I believe in magic, but even that is out to kill and eat me...' My work has very little of that. My work's about beauty. And sometimes, it's just about the lines.

OM: The lines?

AM: Yeah. The lines are like the words. Wait. Let me explain that. I love to read. Poetry, prose, fiction, (though less so in recent years,) but mostly, I love the way that words work. I love reading Dashiell Hammet, and Ernest Hemmingway, and William Shakespeare, because half of their work is just about the way the words feel on your tongue. What they sound like laid next to each other, despite what they mean or what they don't. Lines are like that sometimes. A lot of my lines are synesthetic to me- I want to be able to taste them. To dance them. Imagine that you are blind, and someone hands you something- anything- that you don't immediately recognize. Something that is, by touch, abstract to your sense. The texture, tempurature, angularity- those things will conjure emotion toward or about the object. I like my lines to feel like water and air, and sometimes like melting ice. I want them to conjure Bliss and delight, even when what they outline is darker. I think that's my Zen coming through- I'm all about Bliss, and experiencing the world- even the bad parts.

OM: So, there's a message in your art?

AM: God, I hope not! (laughs) I draw pictures. I try to capture all the things that are beautiful or graceful to me. For much of my life, I've been a very lonely person. Not unhappy, but often lonely. And I guess it's comforting to at least try to share the world I see with others. I keep thinking one day, someone will look at something I've drawn, and say, 'OH! THAT'S why you're wierd like that! You live in another dimension!' Like, somehow I'll suddenly make sense to someone. I don't know. Maybe I already do. I can hope, anyhow.

OM: So, do you have any advice for beginning artists?

AM: A lot more than I ever thought I would. (laughter) My first piece of advice is usually to work with the best materials you can afford. It's always encouraging to see your work looking it's best. Also, never stop 'beginning'. Everybody has to start somewhere- I try to start everywhere. I heard once that some brilliant thinker or other used to pick up a pencil and try to write with it every way except with the point before actually setting lead to paper. That's extreme, but it's kind of how I try to live. I try not to make assumptions about anything, and I try to look at everything every time like I've never seen it before in my life. Paper becomes a sensual experience. Gravel can be fascinating. Dirt is never the same twice. I can be completely overwhelmed by the bigger things. The ocean, the sky. Weather is an absolute miracle. It's a hard way to exist sometimes- but nobody ever said that art was supposed to be easy.