My intent for this painting, titled Lumina, was to visualize the mental state achieved through meditation. In my youth, I experimented with formal meditative techniques to cultivate presence and mindfulness, but these days the act of painting itself has become my meditation. Building on that idea, I designed the artwork based on both personal experience and the history and legend surrounding the practice.
When I was a young, poor, struggling artist, I was interested in becoming a book illustrator. With that in mind, I created a number of paintings inspired by stories for an illustration portfolio. This piece from 1978 was based on a scene from the short story The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard. The character depicted in my artwork is an alien being named Yag-kosha, who was betrayed, enslaved, and tortured by an evil sorcerer seeking his secret knowledge and magical powers. It was certainly an unusual and compelling subject for a painting.
The initial concept for this piece was a woman observing clouds that exhibited a pareidolia effect, such as faces and figures. However, I ultimately felt that cloud characters were a bit of a cliché, and I had already created several pareidolia-themed paintings. So I refined the idea, aiming instead to capture the feeling of awe inspired by magnificent scenery. Although I set aside the pareidolia angle, clouds remained a central element, with the goal of presenting them in a spectacular and evocative way.
This high concept painting presents a dark, contrasting twist on an ancient theme. It features symbolic personifications of the dominant forces affecting humanity today: the God of Science and Technology, the Goddess of Desire and Decadence, and the God of Money and Power.
Mathematicians, artists, and mystics throughout the ages have pondered the meaning of the unique proportion known as the golden ratio. This ratio, rooted in the irrational number phi, is intricately connected to the Fibonacci spiral, the pentagon, the pentagram, and other captivating shapes. The golden ratio, represented by a rectangle with proportions of 1:1.618..., is widely regarded as aesthetically pleasing. I have long been fascinated by the golden rectangle and always intended to create a painting based on these dimensions. Eventually, inspiration struck, leading me to conceive a concept that perfectly complemented the mysterious golden ratio.
The theme of this painting is obviously rocks, more specifically, the Stone Age with a dose of pareidolia thrown in. For those unfamiliar with the peculiar word pareidolia, it refers to the human tendency to perceive recognizable images in objects, especially faces. This piece was inspired by a location in the iconic Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, which I discovered while hiking in the area. The site had some rocks and boulders that definitely reminded me of faces, although I exaggerated them in my artwork for effect.