Holiday Wishes

I would like to wish you a wonderful holiday season

and the very best in the coming year

Peace be with you

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

Thanksgiving Day wishes

To those who are hosting this years Thanksgiving Day event,

may everything go according to your plans and

that your home is filled with the laughter

of friends and family.

You, who are traveling, may your journey be safe

and your hearts filled with joy.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

The Leonardo of Silicon Valley

I am saddened by the loss of a great innovator and modern day Santa Clara's Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, who passed away this afternoon.

If you are an Apple product user you will know what I mean, because it was his vision that propelled us into the digital era and to experience things differently.

Please observe a moment of silence.

1984 Super Bowl Commercial introducing the
Macintosh Computer

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

Family Secrets

Memories are the ghosts of our past,

like fugitives they hide from the day, 

only to haunt us at night

when the mind betrays our reality,

altering the history as we have come to know it.

It is we who choose what to remember and what to forget

separating pain from the pleasurable,

gathering the hurt like the fields harvest

and carefully add them to the box, then close the lid.

Yet the pain does not lessen with time,

not until one has learned to forgive

and even then it does not disappear completely,

for the scars have been carved too deep.

Memories are fragile

and are easily lost when not tended to,

though a photograph can capture a moment,

aiding in recalling the past,

it can also uncover, exposing the darkness to light

that others might see, even years later.

Missing pieces of broken emptiness

Neglected, it's beauty fades and character takes hold of the presence.

No place to hide

All I ask is that you look and contemplate the many meanings.

The remains of irreconcilable differences

Listen to the silence . . .

     for they do have voices.

“Mom, please not the closet,” a child cried

Memories are hard to erase, for they are what we have become and we cannot be denied our identity.

An empty heart

For me the kitchen is where one finds the heart of a home. Neglected and without love, it is nothing more than a room within a house. A house to be considered a home, it most provide a place of safety and nurtured tenderness.

With memories striped bare, stolen innocence still cannot forget

You can empty a room and remove all traces of a former life and identity, yet the memories still remain.

Paint cannot hide the wounds

Pealing away the many layers that have hidden the cruelty not only exposes the ugly secret. it also begins the healing process for the victim.

Leave through many doors to find yourself

By walking through a door and entering a room, we are confined and confronted by the  walls, by the space within and the impressions of others. 

To regain out identity, to discover our full potential and shed the abuse we have suffered, we must leave by many doors.

Lost and found

The series ‘Family Secrets’ comes to a close with ‘Lost and Found,’ but for many people from an abusive childhood, the pain never ends.

In the last few weeks I have relived many memories, gut wrenching and painful at times. The abuse suffered ends with me! It is a promise I made to my dear and lovely children, Armont and Ariana. They will never have to experience the pain and memories of the kind of verbal and mental abuse, or the physical beatings and sexual abuse I endured at the hands of my perpetrator; my mother.

The healing process for any abused person takes a lifetime.

Self portrait with shattered mirror

The only way we can eradicate this evil is to first say to ourselves: “We are not at fault.” All too often we think we are to blame for these conditions, but it is not so. Remember, no love is worth suffering pain and abuse. There is help and you must seek it.

I had returned to the empty club house, deciding to photograph the hallway, using the mirror in the ladies room. As I was setting up the shot, I looked into the mirror and decided to photograph myself instead.

Postscript

Between April 25 and May 30, 2005, I posted ten photographs at an art community website, Renderosity. It was during this time that I went public for the first time, sharing my childhood memories of abuse and openly confronting my inner demons.

The process of healing has taken twenty-six years, when at the age of thirty-five, I realized that I had not been the problem.

Even though I am doing better today, the wounds and scares still remain, at least I proved stronger and so was able to break the cycle, for my children are now grown adults and were never experienced abuse. However I am sorry that my wife was exposed to my pain these  many years.

What helped my recovery process was that not only coming to terms with what had happened to me, but that seven to eight years ago, I was finally able to forgive my mother and so release the anger that I had harbored against her, which by then had eaten away my spirit like a slow moving illness.

This post has had me look back upon my childhood and reviewing the other

150 or so images that that were taken as part of this series in 2005.

An idea took hold of expanding this story and share what has 

happened since I went public and how I have dealt

with the recovery. So now I have begun

to work on a small book.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

Where does time go - Calendar Bookmarks

The last few months just seems to slip through my fingers and here we are at a new quarter, time for another set of calendar bookmarks and the images presented are from a place I like visiting after having seen my daughter.

A spot where many travelers stop off, to view the ocean and experience the feel of pea size pebbles under their feet, as others venture to the other side of the beach and are exposed to a variety of rock formations stretching some distance.

I have seen Bean Hollow State Park under a different weather conditions, when the oceans water serenely caressed the shore and at other times when the oceans furry seemed to clash with a mighty force, as if to carve the topography of the land to its own liking.

Click here to download full size printer friendly version

During the time of my own absence from blogging, I have had the good fortune to be creating numerous new paintings and illustrations, all of which I will be sharing with you in the coming weeks.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Saturday, April 30 at sunset, according to the Jewish calendar was the beginning of the observation of 2011 Holocaust Remembrance Day, while officially on Sunday, May 1, it was observed by all others. In light of this somber reflection I wish to share a painting I completed in May 2008 in response to the 'German Question' and my thoughts about the Holocaust.

Remembrance, May 2008

MM/C 24 x 24” inches (60.96 x 60.96 cm)

During the process of this painting it was first known as “The German Question,” upon the completion, the painting was named “Remembrance.” Briefly I had considered “Absence of History,” a title my son had suggested and a title I am reserving for another canvas.

With the unveiling of “Remembrance” on my blog, I had planned to share an essay on the artist’s social responsibility to create art addressing current social issues or a social conscious message, as I personally feel that artists have a responsibility from time to time to set aside their own artistic efforts and tackle issues. Yet in light of yesterdays observations I shall hold off and only ask of you to reflect upon the Holocaust and that even to this day, crimes are committed against humans by people in the name of country or religion. Have we really learned from the Holocaust?

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - frequently asked questions

The next Holocaust Remembrance Day will begin at sunset on April 18, 2012 for the Jewish people and observed by others on Thursday, April 19.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

Spring, season of hope - calendar bookmarks

Originally I had the spring set ready months ago but in the last minute decided to change all the images to reflect something more cheerful, especially since we have all been experiencing an extended winter, including here in northern California where it has been raining even last week. 

To download the PRINTER version, click here

It was my original intention to photograph not only our cherry tree just outside the kitchen, but a variety of other flowering fruit trees, especially one of my neighbors just up the street. Unfortunately the storm front we had the previous weekend had devastated their trees blossoms and mine were still very small buds, while the apple trees or any of the other fruit trees that I planted earlier this year were just beginning to show signs of growth and far from having any flowers.

The creative objective was to express the delicacy of these flowers and their etherial nature that masks them so beautiful, before their short-lived existence is plucked by a breeze, when numerous petals burst into the air, descending gracefully like giant snowflakes, resting scattered about on the ground.

As of last Thursday the weather decided to be somewhat cooperative by offering decent light, while on the other hand winds proved the whole photographic session nothing more than a challenge; yet during the attempts of achieving my photographic goals I was surrounded by the activities of bees. These industrious insects were moving about very fast, that by the time I had found one in my viewfinder, it was too late, the bee had moved on and I had not even begun to compose the shot. Apart from the bees and a couple of small birds arriving at the bird feeder, I was not alone. Another insect had made it its mission to explore more closely some of the flowers for any hidden meal ticket lurking about.

It was not until this weekend that we experienced spring like weather with temperatures above normal and even shattering a few records. Even the wind had settled down a bit to be considered nothing more than a breeze, offering brief glimpses of hope and opportunity for me to capture numerous more exposures, so that I old have a decent number of frames from which to select three.

Since the completion of the painting ‘White on White,’ I have begun to paint several smaller versions from the Typography Graveyard series, including a much larger painting based on an inner-city industrial wall. When these paintings are completed, I shall share them with you.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

White on White

White on White
 MM-O/C 36x48” (91.44 x 121.92 cm)

After an almost two year absence from painting, I finally held a paint brush in my hand, inhaled the scent of oil paint and Liquin as if they were rare perfumes. It has taken almost this long to also solve a technical issue with which I was faced trying to emulate the series “Typography Graveyard,” the Berkeley telephone poles with their remnants of torn paper fliers.

In a 2009 post ,“A discovery turns into an artistic vision,” there are samples of art works, were collage material and painting are combined in order to duplicate the visual experiences. Now I wanted to take the art to the next level, beyond “Howl” or “Beauty Re-defined,” which are both flat, absent of any light or shadow play and recreate the micro-structure on a larger scale, including adding shapes to the surface. “White on White” is the result of that quest.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

My 2011 calender for you

As we begin the year, I would like to share with you some of my images recently posted for download in the form of bookmarks. These 2011 Calendar Bookmarks  cover the first quarter of this year and feature three of my favorite ones captured in 2010 from the Berkeley telephone pole series Typography Graveyard.

For downloadable PRINTER version, click here and enjoy

In general things have been slow all last year due to my being in cardiovascular rehabilitation and though I graduated at the end of August, I since returned six weeks later till early mid-December. The year 2011 will remain guarded, yet I have decided that health issues should no longer dictate my life as it has these past two years., this also means no longer bringing it in future posts.

A few days ago, during meditations I scribbled a few words in my notebook, then revisited them the following day. The following line represents my path for this year.

“The dreams you have sealed away,

give them the breath of life so that you may experience living.”

In closing I wish to thank you dear reader for having ventured with me these last nineteen months and though I cannot predict what this years offerings will bring for us, my notebooks have been filled with ideas which deserve another closer look.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . . 

Egmont