Linkage

Here is the link to the site for new paintings that are for sale. Right here.


Recently I was talking to a writer friend of mine and she said something about how sometimes she is overwhelmed by the idea that somehow she is so egotistical to think that her thoughts and her words are so important that they need to be put down on paper. Maybe so. Then again, I like the way she writes, so I told her that I like the way she writes.

Many years ago I accidentally sold a couple of paintings out of the back of my car while I was not trying to. I had stopped for groceries and when I came out of the store someone was peering into the back of my station wagon, where I had thrown some new paintings that I wanted to show a friend. The peering person ended up buying a couple of the paintings on the spot. If one thing leads to another, it was right then and there I realized that maybe I could sell some of these paintings. Soon after I set up a website and marketed the hell out it for all I was worth.

It's been along time since I have sold paintings on the internet. Last night I viewed a short film I shot in 2003 with my children as we did a road trip that summer down the coast from Seattle to Southern California. We were driving a beater old VW Bus and we spray painted the name of my website on the side and whenever we stopped we would buy a couple of cans of spray paint and add to the buses design and by the end of the trip the van was a wild moveable feast of colorful delight, and it still worked as an ad for the website. We ended up with hundreds of thousands of visitors and sales of a lot of original art.

What this link brings you to is an attempt to sell this series of paintings to raise the funds of a summer project. We've put together a small little crew to ride across the country next year on bicycles. There is a deeper message that the ride will carry. Over the past few years it seems like the world itself has been in flux, from economic entanglements to massive changes in governments to continued religious fighting. These massive world wide changes seem to swirl above us, sometimes impacting our lives with job losses, or upheaval on governmental levels, and sometimes we are a witness from a distance, but understanding that the change in Egypt is only a few thousand miles away and the freedoms and possibilities demanded by those protesters are the same that are demanded by the people on Wall Street today.

The world is in flux, but so are many in our own worlds. On an individual level I have seen friends and families suffer from both external forces and unfortunate choices and if there is one thing this bicycle ride is going to focus on, it is that search for a healthier life. I June of this year I had one of those moments in a doctors office that leaves you staring at a wall and wondering if you may have pissed off the wrong god. It is a moment like that where you step back for just a second and think to yourself, am I doing the things that matter.

There are other pages under development on the paintings site, pages that describe the ride, pages that detail the filming plan and the motivation, and pages that would allow individuals and groups to join in on a daily basis and ride along as we cross the country in the summer of 2012, an election year in America, a strange time in history and a good time to be on the road.