Category Archives: Travel

Travel photo of the month*

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

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Travel photo of the month*

Exploring Orongo, Rapa Nui

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Pearls from artists* # 547

Paro, Bhutan

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Because solitude provides artists with a safe haven, fits their personality, and offers them a kind of communal contact with other human beings through their work, it can also serve as a breeding ground for stagnation. Without ever quite realizing it, artists can grow flaccid in isolation and begin to experience their solitude as deadening. The studio can become too easy and unchallenging a place.

The world outside the studio offers unmatched opportunities for growth and for the expression of authentic and courageous behavior. Artists often miss these opportunities and, remaining relatively untested, handle themselves poorly when they do venture out.

Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

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Travel photo of the month*

Washington, DC

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Travel photo of the month*

With Jennifer Cox on a film shoot for our upcoming documentary, Clifton, NJ

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Travel photo of the month*

Mount Everest

* Favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Q: Tell us about any other interests you may have besides your art practice. Does it get reflected in your art? (Question from artamour)

Negombo, Sri Lanka

A: Travel is arguably the best education there is.  My travels around the world, supplemented with lots of research once I return home, are an important part of my creative process.  This is how I develop ideas to forge a way ahead.  It is difficult and solitary work.

Even though I became an artist later in life, travel as a source of inspiration found ME.  And it has been a blessing!  People around the world have become fans.  Many send messages of thanks saying they are proud that some aspect of their country’s culture has inspired my work.  I am always grateful and touched to know this.

I love old movies, especially early silent films, classic noir and horror films from the 1930s and 1940s, and anything by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells. Probably this interest is most evident in the way I composed and designed pastel paintings in my early “Domestic Threats” series.  I’m not sure it’s discernible in subsequent work.

Another passion is swimming.  Four times a week I swim at a local pool.  I love it!  In my view swimming laps is the best exercise to help maintain fitness and to prepare for the focus and physicality I need in the studio.

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Travel photo of the month*

Climbing to Tiger’s Nest in Paro, Bhutan

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Travel photo of the month*

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Q: What makes you feel most alive?

Morning in Udaipur, India

A: Making art makes me feel alive, using all my gifts, my brain, my heart, and my hands to create something that never existed before and that can never be duplicated; knowing I’m the only person, ever, who could or would make this particular thing, as I strive to push my pastel techniques further each time out. Whether it’s a painting or a photograph, I enjoy making something from nothing… art that is well-crafted and has never been seen before.  

Travel is the other activity that excites me. I thrive on adventure and I especially love new vistas.  When I am in a country I have never visited before, with every step and around every bend there is something new to see. I am an explorer at heart!

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