Here’s a snippet from the pr release for An Artist Empowered:

From the Mean Streets to Self-Realization
Find Your Walking Shoes

A sage from India sets the stage: “Wanting to reform the world without discovering your true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is simpler to wear shoes.” If the artist doesnt understand the mission parameters, then anxiety and fear reign, or worse—the artist abandons the dream.

Eden Maxwell (painter, writer, and kiteflier of some note) grew up in the hood of the inner city and fought his way out of the projects to find his walking shoes; he recalls:

“Many years ago, with no net, guarantees, or a rich uncle, I gave up the ‘security’ of a promising Fortune 500 fast track position, health insurance, stock option plans, weekend brunches, and a doorman for an unpredictable life of what seemed at the time insurmountable obstacles. My intuition, not a muse, had been whispering the mantra: go for it some day something of value will come. Like the main character in the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (adapted into the film Field of Dreams), I had also bet the ‘farm’ on a disembodied voice only I could hear. Those close to me thought I was making a huge career mistake. If you don’t have faith in your own dream, then what’s the point?”

It can all too easily be taken for granted that we have memory, the astounding ability to record our time in this incarnation; as there is a purpose for all creation, memories of a life, too, eventually transcend and merge into the sea of consciousness according to the purpose of the Maker.

Let’s recall the words of Dr. Seuss:

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

To anyone caught up in the maya of the world, art might seem to be an extracurricular activity, a day’s outing to galleries or a museum, if not altogether an irrelevant topic.

The genuine creation and appreciation of art represent an evolutionary birth in the deep gene pool of grounded awareness. Art is wealth precisely because it born free from the mundane and the tyranny of the masses. To get my meaning, both artist and art viewer must prove the value of this reality to themselves.

A tribe, society, or civilization focused on the exploration of unbridled art will by definition live in relative harmony with themselves and their environment.

Now that’s what I call a plan.

Feeling genuine gratitude despite your petty issues is a blessing for all concerned.

Here is an apt excerpt from my book, An Artist Empowered:

Although Pollock would become the icon, fellow travelers of that era such as Willem de Kooning, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and Jacob Lawrence weren’t deterred from making art that was no less provocative. The works of these artists didn’t happen in a vacuum either; artists who had come before them had already done their share of the grunt work for expanding the understanding and appreciation of art.

Given this lineage of bold achievers, it is essential and healthy to express gratitude toward those artists who have set the stage for your art. Once it had been established that art didn’t need to be representational, the genie was out of the bottle: art was then open to being anything as the subject, as long as it worked.

Think about it.

Remember, the most original artist is influenced by everything of merit. If you envy instead of applaud the innovator, then not only have you missed the point and the opportunity for your own work to evolve, you are lost.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A seasoned defense lawyer is speaking on the radio: blah, blah, blah, and of course, he’s innocent until proven guilty.

Do you find a problem with this conclusion? Look carefully. Sure, we’ve all heard this phrase thousands of times. It is, however, an aberration of the correct rule of law, which is this: innocent unless proven guilty. Do you hear the difference?

In another radio show, a woman reporter was interviewing a young girl.

“Well, I suppose you must be dying to do so and so.”

“I’m not dying to do so and so, but I would like to,” replied the girl who didn’t bite on the grisly dying metaphor, as she was much wiser than the reporter.

This is the trap of parroting things without taking the time to understand.