May the Advent Light Always Shine on You

There is hardly a feast which has some emotional importance to me, except Christmas and Advent. I do love Christmas, even if I have been forced many times to spend it in a way which did not match my dreams… but well, these times are past now, and I am looking forward to Christmas this year with the impatience of a child… although, to be honest, we both are far too impatient to wait until the right moment to discover our mutual gifts. This is a huge mistake, it tales a little bit away the charm of the Christmas gifts unwrapping, but on the other side, it allows us to enjoy these gifts a longer time… my rational excuse to my impatience! What we have got this year is something very special, something which massively increases the life quality of our “Palace of Pleasure” how we now call our home…. I might show you at some point!

I was really confronted with the Advent time first when I went to live in Germany, and I loved it a lot! Spending 4 weeks actively waiting for Christmas, with all kind of nice things like Advent Calendars, Advent Kranz. etc is simply the right way to lead to the Christmas climax. I especially love the tradition of lightening a new candle on each Advent Sunday, starting 4 weeks before Christmas.I have lightened the first candle today, unfortunately alone, as Kevin is away,  gigging in Belgium

So here we are, today is the first Advent and here is my piece for you.

(as always available to send for free as ecard from my ecard gallery at the 123Greetings Studio)

Happy Thanksgiving

I have heard that some people in the world are celebrating Thanksgiving today. Well, to be honest, I have no connection to this feast, but being friend with Susan and Bob Cornelis in the USA, and having worked on some ecards designs, it brought this event a little bit closer to me. Anyway, I have heard that Thanksgiving involves some turkey in the oven…

This card is especially dedicated to golfers… only they might understand the wit?

And now a thanksgiving card for the bullfight lovers… here we come to a most delicate part of my recent life. All my funny bullfight ecards -and it was quite a lot!- have been banned from the ecards company for which I create designs, because a particular organisation in Europe called Irish Council Against Blood Sports has complained to the cgretings cards company for promoting BullFighting cards since its a cruelty against animals. They have expressed their displeasure that this blood sport is used to convey feelings of Christmas and Thanksgiving etc …

In their own website, they have described my art as “entirely inappropriate and utterly distasteful”

This was yesterday. I must admit that I am very upset and went into some deeper thinking state to find out how I want to proceed now. If I can find the time, I might write a post explaining my feelings, but at the end, the fight against the fanatic anti bullfight crusaders has become very boring for me and I am not sure that I want to waste any further second of my life with them. we shall see.

Anyway, here is my “utterly distasteful” thanksgiving piece for bullfight fans, and yes: they still exist, and there are many of them around the world!

 

Hibernating

Sorry if I am not very active here at the moment, but I am kind of hibernating,,,

A Round with Me

I think I mentioned it before in my blog, I have been quite busy lately stretching my pens and my imagination to create card designs for the 123 Greetings Studio. Golf being one of my passions, I have developed a whole series of funny golf cards for some of the annual events like Halloween, Christmas, New Year, etc… I will do some more later on this year, but for the moment, I am done with golf, and here is a little video featuring most of these cards.

The Unreasonable Man

Last spring I was suddenly involved in a poetry book illustration project… and here is the result:I am proud to announce today the publication of this book, called

“The Unreasonable Man”

and written by the Australian poet

Tariq Segal.

In his own words

“Well…  I’m thrilled to announce, the release of my book, my thoughts about life, through the years that this took.
Glad that it’s finished, and glad that I spent, time penning my thoughts, letting emotions vent…”

The book is designed as a coffee table poetry book. It contains 60 of Tariq’s favourite poems with each poem accompanied by either an illustration or photograph.

Tariq says:

“.. I think the artwork alone is worth owning a copy, and being able to review my thoughts as well can only but confirm your own sanity…”

Well I must confess,, most of these illustrations, about 50 I guess, are my paintings.

And here is what I have written in the preface of the book:

“Having myself been an „unreasonable“ person from the very beginning of my life, my encounter with The Unreasonable Man could not fail. As I started reading his poetry, I felt at once a deep connection to his wild world of thoughts, passion and revolt, and agreed at once to become with my art, a part of it.

I was amazed to see how many of my paintings seemed to have been created exactly for his poems,  illustrating in vibrant colours, lines, forms and structures what the poet is saying in words and the empty spaces in between.

But not each of his poems found its rightful painting.. We both collaborated in a weird process of  re-creation, by which  the characters featured in some of my paintings started to assume a life of their own, moving and wandering around, invading Tariq’s universe of poetry, in search of their own particular place among his words. Sometimes they even ended up taking possession of other paintings, either chasing the original occupants away or, more peacefully, finding their place at their side. You will understand what I mean when you look at the original works through my websites!

Anyway, to work on the illustration of „The Unreasonable Man“ was a totally new and very exciting experience in dealing with my own art, seeing me naturally „forcing“ them to interact and fit to the words.

I want to thank Tariq for this wonderful experience and his wise and creative advice in the choice of the paintings.“

For those of you interested in the musings of this troubled mind the book can be purchased online from the US  at:
1.       Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.com/dp/098052380X
2.       Createspace.com : https://www.createspace.com/3354416

The books are also available through Tariq Segal himself, above all for those of you who are in Australia. If you are interested please contact Tariq at

tariq@segal.com.au