Paul Bakker

I just received in the mail, all the way from Australia, this booklet by Paul Bakker. It is mainly about cats and dogs. I hope some day Mr. Paul Bakker will write about his live in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal, Holland, etc. He has been through some stange experiences, some dramatic, some fun. He´s very good at telling stories. Thank you Mr. Bakker!
Clik photos to enlarge.

BioArt

BioArt is a fascinating discipline mixing art and science. Here´s a small contribution that I thought of today. Click photo to enlarge.

Tiffany Bosic and that ineffable feeling

Tiffany Bosic is a young american painter living in California, who paints very beautiful, detailed, allegoric and surreal flora and fauna, like scientific illustration with a twist. Reading an interview with her in this blog that goes by the exalted name "My love for you is a stampede of horses" (for both, see links on the left), I came across this reference to a feeling I used to have while half-asleep, a very pleasant one. I had never commented it with anyone, as it is so dificult to explain. Here is what Tiffany said, refering to this painting:

"I created the sphere of mice painting that I just mentioned, to try to describe what I call the "big little dream", where everything seems microscopic and larger than the galaxy at the same time. It's the 4 am dream that some people get."

If one tries to put it to words, "everything seems microscopic and larger than a galaxy, at the same time" is a good try. I would add that one does not feel the body in the normal way, but it rather seems to be light and vibrating. And no, this altered state of mind is not drug induced.
I´m sure Carl Gustav Jung must have writen about it. If anybody knows about, or experienced it, please contact me.

New painting, March 2011

Museo Vostell Malpartida

Yesterday I went to visit Cáceres and the Wolf Vostell museum in nearby Malpartida de Cáceres. Some photos taken outside, as they don´t allow photos inside. Great art worth a visit. I once saw Vostell in Lisbon. He was standing in front of me to buy a train ticket, it must have been in the eighties.












This street in Cáceres is named after a guy who, aparently, became famous for being a "thinker". I like the laconic reference. I would like to see streets named after men and women whose claim to the vague imortality of toponimic would be prosaic activities or states of mind, like, for exemple, "John Stuart, nose picker", "Mary Jones, laugher", "Victor vassilovich, moustache trimer", "Anne Bologne, chicken peas cooker", etc.



This reads Espanha in hebrew: ספרד
This signs on the sidewalks mark some historic sefardic routes in spanish cities near the border with Portugal.


This is a beautiful stone arch around a door in Cáceres historic center (casco viejo).

Porous Walker´s Great Ready Made Art

Mixed media ready made art he did in the city of Napa, California:

A day on the beach

I found this decomposing corpse of a big sea turtle on the beach. See the ball pen to have an idea of the size. Probabily it was killed in some drift net...



Fossils:



Some improvised landscape art:

Leonel da Silveira

Last weekend I went to visit my friend Leonel. He´s an australian, born in Portugal. He was a pilot in portuguese air force, then went to live for some years in his beloved France, then went to Australia, married and became a citizen. At a certain time he had a job flying helicopters to some islands, over the Great Coral Reef. A job he says one should pay to do...
Now he lives in his home town, Monte Real. He once told me, quoting some french writer, that "we are all refugees from childhood".
He not only travelled, but read extensively in three languages, and he´s what Henry Miller, in "The books in my life", calls a "living book". He knows a lot about portuguese and world history, food, art, literature, and a big etc. He painted and made collages, some of which you can see bellow. He also colects random objects for aesthetic reasons. It´s always a previledge and a pleasure to talk to him.
Click images to enlarge.