The Idea Box Journal

New Painting 🌟

The Light We Share
Oil & digital

Won’t you be my Valentine?

The Valentine’s Day Collection

When roses are burned black
And violets are too tame
Give one of these Valentine’s cards
To hearts with a darker flame 🔥

All framed and ready to go! Now that they’re secure in their protective frames, they’re so sturdy and sheek they look like they belong in a museum! Please share with anyone you think may be interested. I’d love for them find a home as a complete set

Now showing online with WOW x WOW Gallery

About the work

The Regeneration series comes from a place of pure inspiration. Each piece was pulled from the light held deep within, serving to transcend the clutter of daily life. The source is vital energy, reverberating with renewal, with desire, and with enchantment. Made by the hands of one human being for another, these paintings are imbued with the most powerful of forces; intention.

Painted over a year ago as part of my Forest Spirit series, it just recently occurred to me to add leaves to the Green Maiden of Bailieborough. Now the lovely lady’s branches are lush with ivy 😊🌱

Curing the wintertime blues with vibrant greens. For sale on Etsy

Bookshelves are sacred spaces to me. I alone tend to my library. Yesterday though, my girlfriend surprised me with this miniature book nook she had secretly assembled and snuck onto the shelf. I have to admit, it’s pretty charming, capturing as it does the idea of books as passageways into other worlds. For now, I think we can leave it 📚

Ethereal Orchard exhibition now on view at WOW x WOW Gallery

 It’s rare that I reinterpret another artist’s work, but I’ve had my eye on Starry Night for a while. One of Van Gogh’s most well known paintings, Starry Night was made in the last year of his life, while he residing at an asylum. The landscape wasn’t a depiction of the area; it came entirely from his imagination.

I appreciate how Van Gogh treated every element, from the town and the trees, to the sky, clouds, and stars, with an equally attentive dab of paint. There is no empty space, as atmosphere itself blankets like a fabric. The central area is of particular interest to me, where he turns sky and clouds into a roiling wave or vortex. The ethereal quality is something I connect to, although all of his paintings are relatable. They carry the truthful touch of human experience.

Looking to the sky and stars feels especially fitting as we find ourselves on the cusp of entering a New Year and all the possibilities that it may bring 🌙✨☀️

AI and Art: Style, Simulation, and the Loss of Soul

Introduction

To really talk about the issues with AI generated “art” means going for a deep dive and reflecting on why art matters at all. Here’s a brief look at the pros and cons.

The positives:
-Anyone who learns the terminology can have beautiful images created for them.
-Skilled artists can use AI to augment their own work and ideas

The negatives:
-Programs pull from existing artist’s work without their consent.
-Work for artists and illustrators goes to cheaper, faster programs instead.
-The richness of discovery that comes with the process of making art is gone.
-Aspiring artists are discouraged from putting in the effort to find their own voice.
-The overall integrity of the experience we have with art falls apart.

In general I’m much more aligned with being PRO something rather than ANTI something. What I have to say about AI and art falls into the ANTI camp because I’m PRO humanity.

There’s a lot of artists railing against AI from a moral place, saying that it has an unfair advantage. I get that, but sadly in a capitalist society “fair” is irrelevant. We go towards whatever’s easier to meet our needs in the moment. Unfortunately a lot of people will use these programs anyway.

Another major rallying point is that the programs “scrape” the internet for features found on existing artist’s work. These programs not create out of nothing. They swipe faces, places, feet, and fins without the original creator’s permission. Scraping is specific enough that laws can be passed in the future to mitigate it. I fully support those who are suiting up and heading to Washington to make legislation happen. The music industry figured their version of this out already, putting in place agreements and fees sampling. I don’t know if my work is used by these programs or not. But I see this as a bigger concern than whether or not my own paintings are being used.

I’m here to speak about art, humanity, and the balance we need to find with technology 🌟

To be continued…

I highly recommend seeing Avatar: Way of Water while it’s in theaters and I’ll explain why. There won’t be any spoilers.

The reason I feel compelled to endorse a film that’s already a blockbuster is because James Cameron and his team address themes that parallel my own mission as an artist.

The movie will of course be available in the future on the small screen. You can see the Grand Canyon on your phone if you want to, but nothing of the impact will come through. By committing to complete immersion into the film the true force of what it has to offer can be experienced.

Yes the story is science fiction. Yes the main characters are aliens. But the essence of the narrative is a truth that we are all in need of processing.

The Avatar films show that who we are is defined by our intentions and our actions, not by our race or even by our species. Our society still need to be reminded of this.

By identifying with the protagonists we experience the indigenous perspective. Time and again over thousands of years local people have been decimated by colonists. Knowing about these tragedies is not the same thing as internalizing them. We close off when we’re being lectured at. The story is the ideal form to access real empathy.

I can speak to the integrity of James Cameron not because he’s a very successful filmmaker, but because he has used his money to fund space and sea exploration. In 2012 he piloted a submersible into the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench. He was the first person ever to make this descent. The reverence for nature and wildlife comes from a sincere place.

Pandora is an exceptionally beautiful made-up world. By experiencing the fictional planet we are reminded of how amazing our own Earth actually is. Knowing we have to take care of it is not the same thing as feeling the urgency to do so. Inspiration is a powerful fuel for intention.

The conflict of the Avatar films is colonization. We who have benefited from centuries of oppression harbor deep guilt. I believe with conviction that by having our hearts opened we can process the hurt. This is the true value of the film. This does not absolve nations of reparations nor efforts to help indigenous cultures rebuild. This is for us as individuals to acknowledge our need for catharsis.

By letting the tears fall we can begin to release our stored up collective ancestral trauma. We can then do the work that needs to be done.

This is our way forward.