Signal boost this please!
For those of you who don’t know the story behind UNFETTERED, Shawn Speakman published it to help pay his medical bills after cancer treatment. He’s doing a follow up to pay forward the good will he received in his time of need.
Some great authors here and a great cause! Please consider pre-ordering a copy.
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.
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)
Source: michaelwhelan.com
EBB (2000) by Michael Whelan
Acrylic on Canvas - 36” x 48”
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.
I was having a conversation about my work with Betsy Wollheim (longtime friend and smart editor/publisher). She said, “What do you mean you don’t know what they are about? It’s been obvious to me from the first time I saw them.”
She went on to explain that the images were about my emotions at the time of my cancer surgery. I felt that things could go one way or the other: FLOOD is the negative side, a spilling of water in a gray world, unstoppable and rising. In EBB the water is receding and the sun shining, stalwart concrete pillars withstand the assault of the elements to last another day.
She was right, of course. I knew as soon as she started explaining it all!
(via theartofmichaelwhelan)
Source: michaelwhelan.com
EBB (2000) by Michael Whelan
Acrylic on Canvas - 36” x 48”
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.
I was having a conversation about my work with Betsy Wollheim (longtime friend and smart editor/publisher). She said, “What do you mean you don’t know what they are about? It’s been obvious to me from the first time I saw them.”
She went on to explain that the images were about my emotions at the time of my cancer surgery. I felt that things could go one way or the other: FLOOD is the negative side, a spilling of water in a gray world, unstoppable and rising. In EBB the water is receding and the sun shining, stalwart concrete pillars withstand the assault of the elements to last another day.
She was right, of course. I knew as soon as she started explaining it all!
(via theartofmichaelwhelan)
Source: michaelwhelan.com
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)
Source: michaelwhelan.com
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