SOLD.  

(2018) 27" x 40" Pen and Ink Mixed Media Illustration Set in Custom Maple Frame. 

Matted Prints and Mounted Prints available. 

 

Story

How fluidly can you slide between your left and right brain? Giving fully to creativity can be a dance with madness. What's defined becomes abstract and priorities shift. Can you hear your song in everyday life? Does the logic brain dissuade you from fanciful ideas that ask you to create inspired beauty? This is a meditation on the place that art comes from. It's a meditation on the muses.
Note: A visit to the "David Bowie is" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018 allowed the concept of this piece to be. The exhibit showcased his innovation and fearlessness around synthesizing his vast and seemingly disparate influences and interests (art motifs, obscure musical tastes, brand aesthetics, etc..) into cohesive works of art. Incidentally, I was beginning work on the humpback at this time and gestating an ode to my own artistic process and inspiration. Floating around my mind were images of succulents and honeycomb patterns I’d intended on incorporating into future works; exposure to Bowie’s willingness to weave seemingly unlike things into a new, whole, unified piece of art encouraged my own ideas to congeal into one. Further, the concept of the whale either swimming beneath the surface or floating in the sky began to make sense to me the morning I set out to spray paint the background, and an extremely windy Berkeley day allowed the texture to lay down just so on the first pass. As a meta gesture of art imitating life, the trust in the creative spirit I aimed to convey with this piece came out in full force to guide me through it’s own birth.
____
Michael Rohner