EVOKING AUTUMN.

So, how did there come to be a new painting titled 'Evoking Autumn', seeming sufficiently satisfactory and successful in and of itself?

It was four months or more since the previous painting, also similarly preceded by a long gestation period apparently devoid of any suitable potential ideas.  While in a larger sense creative potential may be infinite, somewhat paradoxically not just anything will do.

I could improvise abstractly or in a mode where it's possible for 'anything goes' to perhaps resolve into something significant.  There is always an abundance of profoundly sensitive and infinitely diverse abstract art in the world being created continuously and much that i appreciate.


Yet i mostly tend to make images related to what can be easily identified so as to be entered into, having an aptitude for evoking form, spatial distance, and light, and abstract qualities are concentrated in colour, tone, organic patterning and subtle attention to integrated brush-work.

Not knowing what to express can be very challenging, more so than it used to be perhaps.  Especially in the absence of a social role or other significant mode of activity.  When i have something i'm motivated to work on, immersion in the spontaneous use of a brush is a familiar mode i naturally enter into.


It's not a hobby and i've never regarded it as such and so have never had a use for that word.
Likewise i'm not an amateur artist neither am i professional these are just categories i don't relate to as i've simply continued what comes naturally ever since i could hold a pencil or a brush and the category most related with that is probably human.

So inspiration can't be forced or faked and i just have to wait.  Hardly something you can make a nine-to-five out of.  I dismissed a lot of ideas till a particular photo clicked, thankfully as i wasn't sure if anything ever would for reasons too subtle to describe.


There are criteria, admittedly of my own choosing, relating to the intrinsic significance distinguishing a conception from a cliche and determine if it's a suitable structure for feeling and the feeling is in the flavour and the elements of form and colour and the characteristic touch of brush to canvas

So having waited long in not knowing when or even if for the right moment which always turns out to be now.  Going ahead with loose pencil lines mapping out and adapting image to fit.  Minimal crayon touches to indicate colour, darkest areas filled methodically with black paint and diluted linear washes of same to fortify contours.  Using one bold and pointed brush throughout wielded delicately and wand-like in my most meditative element one with the process.


Wanted it to last longer so as to have that activity to focus on which was unfolding very smoothly and contemplatively quiet.  Yet still came to completion in five or six sessions of afternoon and evening.  Continuing till long after midnight by electric light at a table by a flickering fire and dark chocolate whereas two years previous i would have been smoking 
instead.

Anyway, this is no 'how to' lesson, just a desire to share beauty with some depth, and harmony in a world of harm and money.  There are no superficial tricks or techniques other than what you are free to invent or discover or otherwise stumble upon, and who am i to tell anyone or anything how to be uniquely herself, himself, or itself?


Besides, on a beautifully abundant but barbarically backward planet microcosmically one-with boundless vastness of unknown infinity (aren't we all?) with its insanely orchestrated wars, cultures of corruption and commerce, artworks are sold for prices in hundreds of millions while simultaneous millions are being rendered homeless, stateless, hopeless without food and water and those who've lost the plot literally call the shots and we wish it would all get better overnight while some get rich and famous for predicting it will.

So by contrast as a healing counterbalance and with the best of intentions attentively managing to manifest an actual artifact of unstained intrinsic benevolence integrating random traces and touches of refinement accumulating to a density of richness visually equivalent to an illuminated vision of good news shared freely, and call it 'Evoking Autumn'. ~

~~~~  ~~~~  ~~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker

(Appreciative comments welcome.  Click on title heading.)

GROUP OF LUPINS.

Meanwhile momentarily emerging from many more moons or months of minimal motivation.  Wondering what to paint and why for want of any potentially incendiary incentive to move to make a mark or spark of inspiration.


While well aware the wide world with its wilful wanton ways wild words and weather and war and more the unsuspected invisible tricks and traps all fall for.  Aware the world already overflows with endless arts beyond imagining in huge halls in all cities of the world, how then not be daunted by diversity ?

Wondering what to paint and why, being currently occupied with clipping hedges and grass by hand using an old pair of clippers with wobbly handles, (a brand new pair didn't work on grass at all). I don't use lawnmowers, strimmers, or any power tools, and am averse or allergic to noisy machines so it's a job to keep it in order and when weather or energy levels allow.


Crouched and clipping one of two small front lawns, i paused to look at the lupins proliferating in many large pale pink blooms.  So i went and got the camera and some shots of potentially paintable compositions especially close up.  A subject seeming suitable for a particular kind of brushwork  and to being an image in its own right, something more than just depiction, a subtle but important point.

A painting on canvas 20" by 16" completed in three stages smoothly without niggle or struggle within the space of a week. Pencil drawing stage 1. Working from photo on computer screen, being the most challenging phase requiring a lot of measuring or checking the relative distance between and proportions of shapes so it all fits and with tones indicated so the drawing is complete in itself. Which explains why it can often be hard to make a start.

Stage 2. being simply the tones of light and dark, meaning areas of shadow, along with clarification of form and contour. Defining form so it stands out three dimensionally as volume relative to direction of light source. Integrating the overall structure, sculpturally and no 'tricks' involved but certain optical principles, it's about depth.

Stage 3. Colour clothes the form with feeling. Colour is not merely decorative, it's a relational radiance relative to its context. A frequency or vibration on a spectrum inclusive of all degrees of blend and gradation. As such, its relation to areas of feeling is one of subtlety and precision, density and luminosity, radiance and substance.

In a certain sense the point of the painting is not just its likeness to anything, but its actual vibe, its feeling vibration, as with music. So a lot of focus goes into mixing the exact hue and tone of a colour and in its relation to other colours.

Unfortunately i find that digital photography and digital technology so often falsifies certain colours and changing the source of light won't necessarily correct it, and it changes the whole feeling.  A prime example here being the blueish tone of the wall, which in the actual painting has more of a subtle hint of violet in it 
and a slightly deeper tone which works better within the whole.  You get more the colour if you look from an angle below the screen.  So much for the unquestioned quote: "A bad workman blames his tools", sometimes tools are faulty.  Never trust a blind robot.  You can quote me on that.

Here's the painting under electric light.

  It gains on the wall and loses on the lupins.

All these finer points are aspects of an intent.
The painting is basically a conscious focus and application of positive energy. Being a creative response to the undeniable awareness that the degree of corruption throughout what we call 'civilization' can be more accurately regarded as madness. Which is obvious to the degree that one is aware of it. 

Regarding awareness, we don't know what it is we don't know. We tend to not want to discover what we don't want to know. Understandably. But ignorance is not bliss it's just delusion, liability, and we can't afford that. There are things the nature of which we need to be aware of.

So this is just a sharing glimpse  of something i needed to create as a hopeful counterbalance to let's call it 'the other stuff' going on in the world. A focus on harmony, balance, sanity, benevolence.  No big deal, an uncomplicated, unpretentious beautiful vibe, something to share.  What else to call it but 'Group of Lupins', and meeting the challenge of another thirteen letter title like all the others.  Actually not unlucky as we've been misled to believe due to the date the Cathar inquisition was staged, but apparently a higher octave.  I suppose the lupins really do resemble a group of radiant beings involved in conversation. ~

 

     ~~~~  ~~~~  ~~~~

  Martin Rainbowmaker

P.S. Any layout errors solely due to unaccountably temperamental tech, a 'preview' device that lies erratically, and a long struggle with a malfunctioning mouse.

PLANETARY DAWN.

I confess to being at a loss for words of relevance to having just completed a new painting.  What else can i say?  Only because of never knowing if, when, or how such might happen again despite intimate familiarity with the process.  Hard to explain that it requires a specific motivation rather than to just be produced to order.

The universal collective rising groundswell urge to manifest a planetary dawn of humanity the self-evident source of inspiration for that which simply wishes to be expressed and the discomfort involved due to its being subject to oppression.

So why paint, but to participate in a process of patterning transformation which has as much to do with refined sensitivity of touch as with anything else, most often to the point of almost imperceptible whispers. 

So, in needing this activity as a sustained therapeutic focus i chose to take a chance on an image almost abstract in consisting of a spatial arrangement of flows of colour and tone while still evoking a recognizable realm and essence of benevolent radiance.  The challenge of how to make something out of next to nothing.

As shown in the photo, how else to start but by making a loose approximation as a foundation.  Then you've got something to work with.  You don't just get there in one step necessarily.  It's a process of modifying, enhancing, altering, augmenting, emphasizing, adding to or taking away.  As with carving or sculpting, except with painting you can always put it back. 

It's always a shock how different a painting looks depending on the light, whether electric or daylight.  Working late into the night it can seem complete, with colour and tone, dark and light, warm and cool in the intended balance.  Then later by daylight it may appear to be more of a washed out bland nothingness or some other imbalance, and hard to know which is the correct balance.

That of course happened with this painting, particularly as it's predominantly atmospheric without objects. Especially how certain colours registered when photographed. The digital camera amplified certain colours and tones relative to others, falsifying the actual relationships. It's usually difficult to get an accurate photo because a painting consists of subtle and precise relationships.However, modifying the painting accordingly in the fourth session  evolved into a harmonizing and integration of all areas.  A rhythm of intuitive and restrained touch.  Idiosyncratic minimal modification in silent mind mode of meditative attentive immersion.  Envisioning dawn in dimension of depth and distance in the eye of imagination.

Waves of deft dabs deepening density, raising radiance by blending boundaries.  With squinted gaze and tweaking numerous nuisances of anomalous nuance moving more towards mystic majestic but who would even notice?  Momentarily standing rapt brush in hand then just let it be.  Planetary dawn?  What other kind of dawn is there?  Well it makes 'yet another' thirteen letter title.  ~

~~~  ~~~  ~~~  ~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker.

IMAGES OF PEACE.

A blast from the past ?  Well, not a blast at all, quite the opposite, an image of peace.  One of only two photos i have of paintings i was doing in 1968.  Despite minor blemishes on the transparency being otherwise typical of the innocently romantic peace oriented paintings at that time.

Trying back then with little success to sell paintings on the street, i was approached by a millionaire to produce one painting a week and paid just enough for rent and food. Also did some Zodiac sign posters and attempts at book illustration.

After a couple of years i had a small exhibition at his gallery.  Simultaneously i and my flatmates had to move out and became homeless.  We also happened to meet three people from San Francisco with a van and went off to the South of France with no money and just our guitars and completely abandoned the paintings.


With regard to visual expression of peace, i wonder how often it happens that someone somewhere on earth imagines for a moment a world that's NOT militarized, monetized, industrialized, mechanized, technocratized, digitized, politicized, tyranized, hypnotized, tranquilized, etc.  You know, civilized, and what would it look and feel like ?

Some more recent images.

For there to have been no war anywhere within living memory or even for a thousand years.  Or even any mass poverty, sickness, or soft slavery called civilization, having long ago grown beyond the artificially created need for such things.

Hard for anyone to imagine never mind express with any degree of excellence, and most would be totally sceptical about such an optimally desirable natural state and regard the idea as being merely immature idealistic (admittedly wishful) fantasy and not practical or even possible.  Yet given a choice you'd think such a positive situation would be passionately and unanimously preferable.  What is it with human beings ?

Peace, whatever we take that to mean, refers to a state of being.  The outer manifestation of that, being a reflection and shared participation of inner peacefulness.  It's strange that people seem to imagine that peace would be boring.  If challenge is the issue try imagining collective peace in a world where armed conflict is global big business with huge ongoing vested interests.  There's nothing stranger and more boring than that being so for thousands of years.   

Given that according to the ancient Vedic system of cycles of thousands of years we are said to still be barely out of the age of Kali, the darkest of cycles and age of quarrels.  Then a sense of the evolutionary significance of peace and its creative expression aught to be nurtured from an early age as a basic of education.

If you type 'images of peace' into a computer you'll most likely get endless variations of hands and doves and globes and sunrise reflections, not to mention more than a smattering of upside-down 'peace symbols' which unfortunately in that position symbolically and magically impart something more ominous.  Whereas the right way up it's obviously a tree of life, a being with limbs raised and is in fact a Rune named 'Algiz', used to neutralize negative energy and ground it in the earth, apparently.  What is it with humans ?
I mean, imagine if collectively we were actually good at expressing peace. ~ 

~~~  ~~~  ~~~  ~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker

TIDES AND SKIES.

Not without intrinsic significance that i just managed to create a new painting against seeming odds and have the means to share it.  Not just any old painting either, but one that is satisfactory and has a good feeling about it, a sensitive benevolent vibe. 

The pneumonia in March i spoke of two posts previously completely sabotaged my creative flow, and until a few days ago in the first week of September i was without inspiration, motivation, or meaning, and unable to create or innovate much of anything for six months and even that doesn't describe it.


As with any activity, painting requires a certain level of energy to even begin, and i haven't exactly got my energy back yet, tending to rest a lot.  So i still wonder at having painted this: 'Tides and Skies', 20" by 16", in just three afternoons, thinking it would last longer to give me something to do.

With a need to verify that i hadn't irrevocably lost touch with the creative spark, which is how it felt, and for want of a visual concept that wasn't just arbitrary or predictable.  Difficult to adequately explain that, as it's a subtle point.  Not just anything will do.  It's plain to see what isn't 'it' but hard to imagine what is, and equally hard to describe why.

Serendipitously though, and not a month before time with the near total overcast of the so-called 'Cloud of Unknowing', a miniscule glimpse of an idea engaged my attention.  Iconic like an archetype, a certain soft blend of tinted colour, a horizontal drift of streamline spatial arrangement nothing too complex.  Being but a photo on a youtube video clip i was listening to which clicked as possible foundation for further improvisation and source of inspiration.

Best not to focus only on what the image depicts it's simply a vehicle for feeling.  Better to silently feel through the eyes in a receptive way.  Feel the taste of colour as you would savour a flavour or flow with music, receptive without grasping or projecting, sensitive to the subtle texture of feeling.

I hint at all this only because it's of the essence and perhaps too elusive to be caught or taught. Who can find exact words for qualities and if they exist who would recognize them as such?
Perhaps that's one good reason to paint.  ~

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Martin Rainbowmaker

FIND A PAINTING.

Being aware that when you're on this blog, besides the paintings you see when you scroll down, there is a whole archive of paintings embedded within articles which appear when you click on the year and the month.

Just a helpful reminder of a way (which you probably know anyway) to view a whole page of paintings all together to scroll down and click on one in particular you want to see.  Though it's by no means all of what's in there which however can be accessed via the archive.

Without going straight to the blog, simply type into the Google search or browser: "paintings martin rainbowmaker",  (in that order).  Click the painting you want to view from the collection of 'images'.  Then if you want to go to where it's located on the blog within the related article, click "visit".

This is just a simple reminder of a way of choosing what you want to look at.  From there you can still range around forward or back via the archive.  I'd just like more of what's in there to be easily seen, as well as doing this to retrieve, resume, pick up a thread of blog posting, continuity of flow, sharing what's there for the vibe of it while meanwhile remaining open to to whatever otherwise creative inspiration may hopefully happen and in its own good timeless time.  ~

P.S. "Peace" is this way by the way.  Look up 'Runes'.

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Martin Rainbowmaker

IN THE MEANTIME...

Though there's no need of explanation i am conscientiously aware i haven't penned, painted, or posted anything here for the previous two months.  That's in the context of having sustained constant monthly creative input to this blog for around six years.  While i doubt that anyone noticed absence of posts, i've been meaning to clarify and say i'm still here and haven't gone anywhere.

However, if anyone may have wondered, i wasn't on holiday, quite otherwise.  During an unusually cold and snowy month of March i was promptly taken into the hospital for almost three weeks with pneumonia.  With a tube into my lung the whole of that time draining more than three and a half litres of infected liquid.  Now it's cleared and i've been back at home for a few weeks, recuperating though relatively active hopefully reorienting from a traumatic experience.

I also instantly quit smoking just three months ago due to the urgent necessity of the situation after having smoked for sixty years.  Lost nearly two stone in weight in the hospital and found the food terrible, went without tea or coffee for three weeks as i don't drink fluoridated tap water.  Regaining weight gradually now but with a confusing relationship with food and appetite.  Unsurprisingly it's taking a while for me to rediscover where my source of creative inspiration is at for these as well as other reasons.

In the meantime, i really am hoping to regain the motivation to resume painting and well aware that tobacco withdrawals is a factor affecting the flow.  Sensitive inspiration is very vulnerable to the awareness of the harshnesses and repetition etc. of the human world.  Something that i am lately finding elusive to adequately articulate in the way i mean and writing this is an attempt to remedy somewhat or at least address it.  Being just an informal blog update for now whereas i mostly like to have a new painting to share.

Actually i've never known what i might create next or what's conceivable, but my standards of what's adequate to motivate seem to be more challenging so it's hard to do what i've done before, along with what does it all mean and what to do with it, as well as what to do if it doesn't happen.  But if something happens i'll be glad to share it here.  Meanwhile there are more than six years worth of paintings interspersed through the archives of this site.  It's a bit like a diary except you're more than welcome to look.  ~

~~~~  ~~~~  ~~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker

A KISS OF THE SUN.

"A Kiss of the Sun", a phrase heard on the internet in a conversation about 'ascension' or 'kundalini'.  A suitable title for a painting and with thirteen letters signifying transformation.

Or was it talk of an imminent 'solar flash event', originating from the galactic central sun ?  Said to occur every few thousand years.  Elevating all life on earth and beyond to a higher level of evolution.  Yet another concept gone what is ironically called 'viral'.  Backed by diverse prophecies from Vedas to Zoroastrian etc. , as well as  scientific and astronomical theories.  Plus, a growing trail of inevitably glamourized wishful thinking.   

Ironically perhaps with specific regard to the 'solar flash event' and for those who are already familiar with the topic, i recently heard Corey Goode on video bring the stated concept into question by saying that: 'David (Wilcock) thought that way for a while, but it's not the way it was explained to me.' Approximate quote. But surprising perhaps, considering the extent of publicity already given to the idea.

Not intending to discredit as how would anyone really know anyway ? We naturally wish for what we would most like to see, so that when it's presented and corroborated as a likelihood it easily amplifies from being a rumour to become an opinion or cherished collective belief.  There's a lesson of discernment in all this.

Since it's understandably natural enough to by preference feel affinity with a world bathed in the light of peace and freedom.
Rather than the one we know of with its perpetual systemic wars of domination and control. Without dismissing preference as non-acceptance of what is. 

The diversity of sources historically contributing to any pronouncement that something is imminent is complex to discern as is the truth of the thesis proposed. So the 'solar flash concept' resonated primarily imaginatively as creative visual potential, but proved after a few weeks not easy to resolve. So i stopped trying and this image occurred.

Or rather, got off to a very rough start, being a bold leap of just random shorthand for something requiring further methodical attention to overall specific detail. The aim being to create a very calming, uplifting, majestically benevolent image out of next to nothing. With the emphasis on complementary colour harmony, radiance, integration and refinement to the subtlest degree.
So, by way of illustration and wishing to be encouraging to anyone who may find they have a similar daunting mess to transform, here again is the completed painting for contrast and comparison just to show that it is possible.

So it took around thirty-five hours of eight hour sessions over four days to get it right.  With repeated tonal alterations almost too precise to see and depending on the source of light whether natural or artificial.  As with many modifications of minute details and brush strokes too soft and fine to even point to.

A small unpretentious meditative experiment of intention on a 16" by 20" canvas.  Sending a soft radiance out into a mad world of harsh karma-dramas in dire need of a cataclysm-cancelling catalyst of benevolent transformation and  A Kiss of the sun. *  

***   ***   ***   ***

Martin Rainbowmaker.

  

TWIN RADIANCE. 1.

A simple post for now.  Due to a continuation of one of those all too familiar in-between phases of what to express and how to orientate to it in a way that motivates.  While wanting only to share something that radiates a bit of light.


Not just that some previous paintings seem to continually call for an uplift in mood and mode, but the awareness that personally and collectively, the human situation, consciousness itself, is in need of a radical infusion of lightness, clarity, and wisdom of a higher order.  A polarization of what we call dark and light is self-evident.

Source of Light. Jan. 2005.

So no wonder if there's an ongoing rumination as to how to integrate this awareness into a painted image without it being a parody of false light or wishful thinking, by contrast with the prevailing emphasis on sensational exposure of yet more of the corrupted dark which was previously hidden. A false dichotomy without any verifiable encouraging news.

Twin Radiance. 1.

Contemplating the intricacies of the conundrum for weeks without resolution or creating anything.  With the so-called Alternative Media regurgitating interminable loops of self-contradictory questionable rumours and 'soon to be disclosed' sordid convoluted intrigues and sensationalized serial shocks and dramas with a quick turn-over interspersed with new-age self-help, contrived contradiction designed to distract and confuse and trap on the time-track of upcoming news.

Meanwhile with regard to catalysts and radiance and previous paintings i retrieved this photo i'd forgotten about.  Painted a decade ago and called Twin Radiance. 1. as i did two versions fairly large on board, both of which someone since bought.  I just have this one photo so, a simple post.  Basically to share as a reminder of peace and harmony and as an icon that radiates a bit of light. *

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Martin Rainbowmaker.

P.S. Regarding comments:  When you click on the white title-heading a comments box will appear at the bottom of the page.  Or click 'comments' at bottom of list on the right.

CASTLES OF CORK.

In a previous post i mentioned 'Castles of Cork'. Three words which in one sense may sound self-contradictory, (an oxymoron) castles being heavy and cork being light.  While the cork referred to here is County Cork, Ireland.

The castles are the subject of a book i was commissioned to illustrate some years ago and titled The Castles and Fortified Houses of West Cork, authored by Michael J. Carroll and published in 2001, with eighteen illustrations.

So i intend to share a few of them here, not only because they were hardly acknowledged, considering the meticulous attention that they took to produce.  Twenty-five hours on each drawing with the flimsiest reference material, no architectural knowledge, and all done with a sable brush not a pen.  While seated on a narrow wooden arm of an armchair for want of an actual chair to sit on, in a substandard house with no daylight.

But also now as something to post on the blog, as i'm in that long-familiar void-like space of not just not knowing what to paint, but also what can be conceived of as having self-validating significance within the limitations of the medium itself.  Always a seemingly insoluble challenge which may be so, since all imaginable visual conceptions have been and are being explored collectively.

Which might be enough to stop anybody in their tracks and opt for improvising on an already existing mode, which is what tends to happen anyway whatever you do, and seeming ironically paradoxical.  Or alternatively to improvise on no preconceived mode at all, which also has been and is being continuously explored globally and comes to the same thing with both predictable as well as sometimes brilliant authenticity.

But architectural illustrations !  Not exactly a mode of choice, have to be a certain way of accurate depiction which has to be drawn in true perspective before dipping a brush into ink.  Very demanding, doesn't come easy, don't know how i did it and don't expect or intend to do it again.  Such meticulous detail, redeemed only by infusing a poetic consistency into every single mark of the brush.  Worth enlarging to see clearly.

At some stage of the project i had a dream recall which which tends to happen only rarely.  In the dream i was floating high above the now barely discernible foundation rubble of all that remains of a specific castle on a wild island.  Then in the dream, descending to view it as it was when originally intact, and from a sideways view.

The very next day the author unexpectedly requested and with little or no reference material but for a description, and no mention from me of the dream, that he particularly wanted a sideways view, naturally enough.  While i tend not to claim to having had an out of body experience, perhaps i did, who knows.

That drawing is the one with the title 'Oilean Beag' (small island) below it in Celtic script.  My apologies for any drawings without titles as i don't have the original artwork, only photocopies from before all titles were added.

But just look at all that stonework detail and every dot in place. Twenty-five hours of it including preliminary tracing layout of composition transferred to paper, meaning i drew each castle three times.

Meanwhile i have a blank canvas still sitting here for a month and no idea what to do with it. Need some colour, don't we all? Especially this time of year. Despite Christmas which i don't celebrate, may the human situation and the whole earth brighten up in all possible and presently inconceivable ways. *

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Martin Rainbowmaker.

P.S.  It would be nice to receive an appreciative comment as i've only had three or four in the past five years of continuous monthly posting.  Like working in an 'ivory tower' ! 
It's simple, just click any white title heading, or the word 'comments' in the list on the right.
Thanks in advance. ~