Doodles & Poems

Combing

Poems are like
Things you find
On the beach.
They’re misshapen but usually
Sparkle in sunlight.
Some are alive
And scuttle about.
Others are dead but have left
Beautiful
White
Skeletons.

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Visitors

Some days the poems knock
On your front door.
You go to open it
And greet them.
You get lots of visitors
On such days.
The knocking persists
Even as you turn off
The lights.
The knocking persists.
The knocking persists.
The knocking persists.
Other days
You wait.  No one comes.
You feel
Lonely
Forgotten
Dead. Maybe you are dead?
How would you even
Know if you were
Or weren’t?  Who
Would give you
The news?
When no one comes
You aren’t for sure
If you even
Are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had I Been Born a Cat

I’d be a lot more relaxed than I am right now had I been born a cat.  That’s because I’d know, right in the back of my feline mind, that I had been given nine lives, which is a lot of time to work with and provides for a large margin of error.

Human beings, unlike cats, are given only one life, and it’s a fairly short one.  To make matters worse, a lot of that one lifetime is either spent asleep or doing things like sitting in a cubicle at work.

I’m writing all this because I am cursed with a strange affliction.  From just about the moment I was born, I have had too many interests and passions.  I am a very creative person with lots of different talents, all of which I’d love to equally pursue.  But I can’t because of the whole lack of time thing.

I’ve had to neglect this blog, and I’m so upset about it.  It’s not that I haven’t been writing.  I have been.  In fact, I’m about sixty percent done with a novella that should end up being about hundred pages long.  It’s a dark book which suits my current mood.  (There’s a backstory there that I won’t get into right now.)  The thing falls within the genre of psychological thriller with elements of the horror story.  My working title is The Red Room.

I’ve also been doing a lot of digital art.  In fact, on the art front, there has been an interesting development.  About a week ago, I got an email from someone representing Vida.com, an interesting company that works with artists and designers to produce fashionable, high-end clothing and accessories.  The person reaching out had seen my work and wanted me to send them some of my images.

So I will send some.  And I will continue to work on my novella when I can fit it in.  And I will continue to make art, mostly late at night when the opportunity presents itself.  Oh, and by the way, I hope to be a more regular blogger too.

I’ll finish by sharing a few pieces of my newest digital artwork.

Picasso, Almost

Sigh.  I probably missed my calling.  I say “probably” because no one can ever predict how things would have actually turned out had I taken a different route.

My father was and is an artist, and I was born with artistic talent.  As a result, I started doing drawings and paintings as a child, and I even showed work at small art fairs when I was just a youngster.

I studied something other than the fine arts, though, when I went to university.  I continued to make artwork during my free time while I took classes in the humanities and liberal arts.

About a decade or so ago, I got this crazy idea that I would become a professional artist.  Actually, the idea was sane enough for me to successfully place a lot of work in galleries in the US and abroad.  I sold quite a few pieces and then had to scale back because it was too difficult to manage an art career when I was so transient and living is such far-flung places.  (For about the past twenty years I’ve been an expatriated American and have only recently returned to my home country.)

Today, like so many others, I’ve become obsessed with the internet and all things cyber.  As a result, I’ve become more and more a digital artist.  Now, when I make I pictures, they are, by in large, computer-generated.

I have developed a pretty cool method for making these pieces.  The works are the result of a complex creative process.  Many of them start out simply enough, as digital drawings, paintings, or photographs, but then they morph into something that’s hybrid, bold, and totally funky.

I’ve included a small sampling to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  If you’d like to see more, go here.