Spinozablue

An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Digital painting

Irony for a New Age, Plus New Paintings

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I both love and hate irony. And, no, it’s not Like Rain on your Wedding Day. That’s just Murphy’s Law — for some. For others, it’s perhaps a warning/blessing in disguise, or just a wry comment at the start of a new journey.

Anyway, back to Irony. I remember it being my very good friend when I was young, but I think I may be losing that connection the older I get. For the young, it’s a stance, usually dressed in black, one that often finds itself keeping company with walls, for some reason. Irony and walls. Leaning against them, generally speaking.…

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Summer Posts and Further Artistic Experiments

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Spinozablue has recently added some poetry by Howie Good and Alessio Zanelli, the latter joining his fellow Italian, Gabriella Garofalo, from June.

Continuing experiments with Krita brushes, most recently playing around with some of its filters as well. One, in particular, adds a nice brush effect to the whole. It’s called “brushify,” strangely enough. I’m still doing free hand, 99% of the time, with a combination of the mouse and digital pen, but venturing a bit into the post-painting world of filters. Not going back on my rules regarding limits. If I can’t reproduce the effect in the real world, I won’t do it with software.…

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Collective: The Sad, Lonely Life of a Word

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Several strands of thought come together, collect themselves, flash. I see beyond and outside them. I know it’s too obvious. The fight. The human desire to undercut. The unconscious desire to blow up — oneself, contrary to conscious goals, even “will.” Nietzsche’s will and more, and not. Not his interpretation of that, necessarily, nor Schopenhauer’s. But mine and, I suspect, millions of others.

What am I talking about? The mass production of subverting and sabotaging oneself, multiplied. It’s no wonder that we’re lost in a sea of stupidity and the counterproductive. We have so many. Too many competing messages to deal with, too many hours a day.…

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Joseph Campbell and the Feminine Divine

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I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell since I was nine. He was foundational for me, along with Robert Graves, Lady Gregory, and Jane Harrison, sparking a greater love of world mythology, its roots, its scope and diversity. Going back to him as of late, I’m uncovering things I either forget about or missed entirely the first go round, and it has me rethinking more than a few things these days. Nearly halfway through his posthumously published book on goddesses, and I’m hooked again.

Goddesses (2013) is basically a collection of his lectures and talks between 1972 and 1986, with a focus on the Female Divine in myriad incarnations — Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Hindu — and a few mentions of its tragic, world-altering suppression along the way.…

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To the Ancient Seaside, Again and Again

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More experiments with various brushes and their effects, and more departures. I’m closer. Closer to visions of renewal and release I once had — nearly on call. Closer to their full return.

The sea is inside us all. Can a person claim that it’s more a part of them than others? And does that matter? We can make that claim, certainly. Accuracy aside, it’s not really anything that needs evidence. For the ocean within, our DNA tracings, our narrative poems, and the eternal return of waves, salt, and sun are enough.

Atavism rules, for good or ill. If we Make Ten, it’s beyond good.…

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Paintings in Tumult: New Departures

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Here are a few of my latest digital works. I’m able to utilize the pen more and more now, and that means I can paint virtually with the same hand I would in the real world. It’s still not ideal, but getting better all the time, as the Beatles once sang. In some future world, many years from now, perhaps, I’ll have a super-sized screen, a stand-up Rilkean desk, and a view of the ocean to inspire me. The wind along the strand, my own Molly or Shannon or Niamh to take me to Tír na nÓg when the feeling hits us, and then back home again before dawn.…

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Maxwell’s Demon and More New Poetry

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We’ve added three new poems by Robert Mueller this month. Please feel free to leave comments on the Contact Us page.

I’m almost finished reading a good novel by Steven Hall, Maxwell’s Demon (2021). Postmodern, and very Meta. Some fun facts about Entropy, angels, oxen, bees, Jewish gods and mysticism, and the Apocrypha along the way, which Hall integrates well throughout the narrative. I can hear echoes from Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds too, but this is really Hall’s show and his alone. 

Boiled down, it’s a book about a writer’s search for a book, or two, or three.…

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Sacred and Profane Gardens.

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Got in a good walk today, listening to music as I moved through the blue air. Strange beginnings, with “Revolution 9” by the Beatles spinning up first, splitting my head in two, then four, hoping “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” would follow, but she didn’t. Thought, too, about my most recent paintings, and about friends who have already left this world, one who also painted. He was self-taught, and could have been great if he had had the time. July 7th, 1979, and it was over. More on his life and art in the next post. 

Music often does that to me, as does walking.…

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