MICHAEL WHELAN

FLOOD (2000) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Canvas - 36" x 48"

Faced with the prospect of cancer surgery, I thought that while awash in pain killers I might at least experience some interesting dreams. Instead I found that the medications did exactly the opposite, completely deadening any creative sense I had. My net sum of interesting creative ideas while in the hospital was zero! It taught me a valuable lesson: creativity is linked to my reasoning and thought; interrupt the flow of thought artificially and the creative forces are negated altogether.

Some time afterwards I did experience some particularly compelling waking dreams. I didn’t know what they were about, but I felt that I had to paint them. EBB and FLOOD were done on faith - it didn’t matter if anyone—even myself—understood what they were about, they had to be made real.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)

GRAVITY (2002) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Canvas - 43” x 35”

Once when I was being sedated for surgery and I was counting backwards, “99, 98, …” I felt this surge of irresistible calm sweep over me like a vast tide of night. While I floated away I felt myself become totally, completely relaxed. I realized in an instant that I had been unknowingly living my life in a state of being clenched. It was a blessed relief to feel all the tension completely give way to ultimate relaxation—maybe for the first time in my adult life.

In the days and weeks of recovery and rehabilitation that followed and the exigencies of getting back to work, I forgot that brief flash of self-awareness, but fortunately the memory returned one night just as I was falling asleep. With the awareness came this metaphor for the experience.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)

THE DREAMING LANDS (2002) by Michael Whelan

Oil on Canvas - 20” X 30”

This painting is one of several works derived from my experiences at MSKCC in 2000.

That year I also read a couple of books which mentioned a feeling I have experienced at night during camping trips: lying in some huge quiet wilderness area, and imagining the overwhelming weight of the Earth at my back, as if I was actually lying in space and pressing against my back was the huge sphere of the earth with all its wonder, order, chaos and complexity. At the same time I also had a sense of being a part of it all, of sinking into and being one with the foundation of stone and rock which supports us all, the whole planet and everything on it.

This feeling came to me again while I was recovering in the hospital, with the sense that all the buildings and man-made constructs were transparent as mist, that the “bones of the land” (the rock and stone under everything) were the only things that were real and solid and supporting me.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)

FLOOD (2000) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Canvas - 36" x 48"

Faced with the prospect of cancer surgery, I thought that while awash in pain killers I might at least experience some interesting dreams. Instead I found that the medications did exactly the opposite, completely deadening any creative sense I had. My net sum of interesting creative ideas while in the hospital was zero! It taught me a valuable lesson: creativity is linked to my reasoning and thought; interrupt the flow of thought artificially and the creative forces are negated altogether.

Some time afterwards I did experience some particularly compelling waking dreams. I didn’t know what they were about, but I felt that I had to paint them. EBB and FLOOD were done on faith - it didn’t matter if anyone—even myself—understood what they were about, they had to be made real.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)

GRAVITY (2002) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Canvas - 43” x 35”

Once when I was being sedated for surgery and I was counting backwards, “99, 98, …” I felt this surge of irresistible calm sweep over me like a vast tide of night. While I floated away I felt myself become totally, completely relaxed. I realized in an instant that I had been unknowingly living my life in a state of being clenched. It was a blessed relief to feel all the tension completely give way to ultimate relaxation—maybe for the first time in my adult life.

In the days and weeks of recovery and rehabilitation that followed and the exigencies of getting back to work, I forgot that brief flash of self-awareness, but fortunately the memory returned one night just as I was falling asleep. With the awareness came this metaphor for the experience.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)

FLOOD (2000) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Canvas - 36" x 48"

Faced with the prospect of cancer surgery, I thought that while awash in pain killers I might at least experience some interesting dreams. Instead I found that the medications did exactly the opposite, completely deadening any creative sense I had. My net sum of interesting creative ideas while in the hospital was zero! It taught me a valuable lesson: creativity is linked to my reasoning and thought; interrupt the flow of thought artificially and the creative forces are negated altogether.

Some time afterwards I did experience some particularly compelling waking dreams. I didn’t know what they were about, but I felt that I had to paint them. EBB and FLOOD were done on faith - it didn’t matter if anyone—even myself—understood what they were about, they had to be made real.

(via theartofmichaelwhelan)