Arrival of Redhead

I shall finish the Game, Doc... -Billy the Kid, Young Guns 2 (1988)

Showdown / Arrival of Redhead / Battle of the Drakes was completed on August 15, 2024. The work was conceived as an entry for the Wetumpka Wildlife Arts Festival/Exhibit/Contest 2024 to be held in Wetumpka, Alabama during October. It was accomplished using acrylic paints mixed with black light glow reactive alloys on a black canvas 24” x 36” on a porch in rural Coosa County, Alabama. The picture above shows how the painting has a different aspect under daylight, compared to nightlight.

This marks a new chapter in my development as an active artist. I was inspired to begin exploring different elements that get excited by light in various ways, like Strontium & Zinc, after seeing a mural on the history of astronomy by Larry Godwin, Jr of Brundidge, Alabama at the Gayle Planetarium in Montgomery, back in January. This adds a whole new dimension to painting, where light is actually charging the paint with living energy, that can be visible under certain conditions. And I have begun a hybrid style of a series of pieces that have a day look as well as a night look, by mixing normal paints with glow chemicals together. See here for animated Work-in-Progress record of this piece.

The scene depicted is the moment when a Redhead Drake surprises a flock of Mallards. Perhaps he has come to lay a territorial claim in a cozy lake inlet. Or maybe he is there to fight for a particular female, as male ducks will do. The main thing I was trying to capture was the idea of a different being from the outside, arriving on the scene, suggestive of a Wild West showdown, and the ensuing fluster amongst the established cadre of dominant males in reaction to this new presence. In contrast to the unsettled appearance of the green ducks, I wanted the red duck to be daring, yet calm, collected, and ready to handle anything that comes his way.

I have always loved the beautifully bright colors of the heads & eyes of male ducks, or drakes, and thought to create a piece that sort of highlighted contrasting hues as they actually appear in nature. Both the Redhead & the Mallard are native to Alabama, and can be seen along waterways and lakes throughout the state. Also, my mother Bonnie was a distinctly extraordinary redhead, herself, and so this piece is an homage to her, a very dear person in my life. On this porch near Rockford, Alabama, she used to sit and do a variety of arts & crafts and I am trying to carry on that tradition in her footsteps.

In addition, I must mention how this particular scenario occurred to me as a worthwhile artistic theme for these Alabama ducks. It really came from my experiences in fostering flocks of hummingbirds in Santa Barbara, California years ago. After a UCSB anthropologist showed me how, I learned to attract large numbers of these birds with a certain recipe for nectar and a strategy for feeder placement. Sometimes hundreds of them would converge at feeding times! And what happened in that more arid region was that initially, there were a few different types or colors of hummingbirds. But soon, the “Greenback Rubythroats” came to dominate the scene. They ran the roost for many months! Yet there was this one time when a little red hummingbird showed up all alone and dovebomb in to fight for his share of nectar. I thought the Greenbacks would easily run him off. But they did not. Week after week, Tweeter, as I called him, came back for more. It was not easy for him. The Greenbacks attacked him every time. He had to fight hard, as he was vastly outnumbered. But he continue to hold his own. I thought that was cool.

Welcome back to the Royal Road!

It has been 1 year since I rededicated myself to the physical artistic process, in a serious daily manner, as a personal drive to implement creative drawing, coloring & painting back into my life, after some period of dormancy. And in review of this past year’s creative output, I have to say that I have never been more productive & prolific! I have completed 20 large scale artworks and at least 2 dozen digital pieces on the computer. In addition to that, I have participated in 3 significant art shows since October, and plan to continue to build a reputation in the Central Alabama region, an area rife with artistic growth.

And while I have tried to chart that path here on this online journal with regular updates, there is much that I still have not fully pointed out. So, this post is also going to be a summary glimpse overview of some of the other aspects of my work as a multi-media artist. If you are interested in seeing a personal portfolio, check here.

The Royal Road as an actual art series, is complete. And the two sequences that I have created marking the path of wisdom from the Wandering Fool to the Master of Destiny can be seen here in this poster:

I continue to refine the graphic look of the “cards” towards the eventual printing of 2 decks, based on a Roman & a Greek key. This marks the establishment of an innovative system that actually recovers an ancient Tradition, based on real academic research. Again, I would like to emphasize that the tarot is not a system for dabbling in fortune telling, though it can be used for that, but rather more ultimately, a type of narrative geared towards understanding ancient mysteries of the human soul, that is universal in scope. It pertains to Palingenesis and unlocking hidden aspects of the psyche and Active Imagination, as Carl Jung and others have conceived of it.

In 2022, I hit pause on physical art but became more active with digital and computer media, in the context of the rise of blockchain and AI in that year. And so, last year, in 2023, when I began to earnestly produce physical works again, as a daily commitment of time & energy, I found that I also wanted to refine those works in various ways, on the computer. And so, I began generating more AI works as well as digital containers or frames for physical works.

I have found that creating works for blockchains like Ravencoin and now EVRmore, helps me in archiving and organizing physical works, too, as a byproduct of the process. For the AI aspects of this oeuvre, I use NightCafe & Photoshop, my all time favorite graphic design & animation tool. If you are curious about the digital avenue of creative output, check here. There are too many works accruing to fully outline it in this essay, so I will include only 1 shot of the Ice Raven, Lenore, and point to that doc for further research as time & the Royal Road goes on!