Purple Moon

I just can’t bring myself to see the moon as a pale white or yellow entity. For me, it has a very full, deep, red-and-blue feel to it.

Except for the few times it does humor me on this point of contention, I am forced to recur to my artistic tools to make that fanciful vision just a tad more real. Makes you wonder what “real” ultimately means, doesn’t it?

Path of Spirit

Do you often focus on your goals, your target, imagining the life you want to be living? I know I lose myself that way from time to time - that’s why I’m writing this piece right now. I’m tired of running in circles, chasing ill defined measures of “success”.

The path of spirit is not as straight as your mind would have you believe.

Lately I’ve started challenging all the definitions and preconceptions floating around in my head, and they have slowly given rise to some very interesting questions: Do I even need to define a destination, and end to my path? Isn’t that besides the point of living, isn’t every step along the way a worthy place to reach?

Why does the notion of already being where we need to be sound so absurd to the logical mind? Why are we unable to just stop and look around?

If you narrow your own view to the point where you can only see straight ahead it can surely turn you into an efficient machine, but it also makes you miss all the beauty present in life. This world is surprisingly malleable - whenever you’re not sure where you’re going, all you have to do is to set one foot before the other with intention, and a new way will form itself before you.

Never be afraid of straying a bit. When you walk all paths of life as if they were only one, you will never get lost.

Hidden Ancient

Can you feel the pulse of this force, oldest of all? Contained for so long, waiting to burst out and leave a dent - or a crater - in this world. Can you hear the call to embrace this wild, primal power?

The human spirit is not always gentle, but through awareness, this instinct of chaos and destruction does not need to be violent.

Does Beauty need an Explanation?

I don’t think she does.

Beauty is fundamentally subjective, and no explanation does her justice. Just let her flow right into you, let the seed she carries be planted. Soon, you’ll discover that an unexplicable spark - usually only noticed in those rare moments you seem more awake than usual - is present everywhere, whispering to your senses. What a joy life becomes when you find that spark!

Branching Reflections

This is the twin sister of another recent piece. It’s funny how two fractals can be literally 15 seconds apart from one another and look so different. The fact that the computer colors and finishes an image in fractions of a second makes experimenting very worthwile. There is no price to making a mistake, and great opportunity lies within the chaos.

Fractals and I somehow just click - it’s like love at first sight. I don’t think I’ll be leaving this medium behind, ever. Maybe I’ll expand, try something new… but my first love in art will always be fractals, just like Tolkien will always be the first writer who really pulled me in deep. Speaking of which, Jeff has put up a great series on Tolkien, fiction and divination, a combo which you definitely don’t want to miss.

And then the Moon Turned Red

I missed writing about this yesterday, but it’s still worth saying even if it isn’t news anymore. The eclipse was beautiful, and I was lucky enough to watch it from the roof of my building sometime after wednesday midnight. I tried capturing the moment, but ultimately settled for this abstract depiction (which hardly does the experience justice).

Intuition has always been very hard to describe for me. Generally it’s nothing more than a whisper, easily mistaken for the senseless chatter of the unconscious; it’s only the worldview I choose that gives the word its significance. Other times, such as this one, it’s a feeling so strong that it just forces me to drop everything and follow my gut. As usual, I found out about it the same day it was going to happen. As usual, the lazy part of me tried to convince me that it wasn’t going to be anything special; but as usual, the overwhelmingly strong urge to be there got the best of me.

It was definitely not the kind of thing I’d want to miss. The full moon was shining golden, red and orange, with such a force that it permeated me. It seemed like it was pulsating life, energy, pure fire. It certainly struck a chord inside, and the next day I just happened to stumble upon a story fit for the occasion, which spookily reflected my own inner struggles.

I wonder what opportunities I have been missing that could have made my day even a little bit more magical. Every night could be like this if I just chose to make it so. And what about you? Feel free to share your magical stories, ecplise-related or not, in the comments.

The Second Half of Art

I have always said that creating art is only the first half of the work, half its significance. The other part, the one that completes the piece, makes it come full circle and gives it meaning, is the act of observation.

This was made very clear to me recently, when Deb left a comment in one of my latest posts to tell me how I had moved her to open up and start listening to her artistic inspiration. Barely knowing me, she told me of a vision that struck her, an interpretation I had never intended but which was nevertheless very powerful - in a way relevant to her and her unique viewpoint.

A particular image, just like the fractal it’s composed of, can replicate infinitely to present a unique and personalized version of itself to each of its viewers, sometimes meaningless, sometimes deeply transforming. My own perspective is only one among many, and with that realization, all I can do is take a step back and let my art speak for itself, allowing it to unfold and reach its fullest potential - without being hampered by the constraints of my particular interpretation.

In that spirit, today’s piece doesn’t come with an introduction. Instead, I’ll let you decide what to make of it, how to complete the puzzle that brings something deeper to this mere collection of colored dots. I must say that I am deeply grateful to you, for you have given my art a breath of life, and by doing that, turned into an artist yourself. I’d love to hear about your interpretation in the comments, if you feel like sharing it.

Phoenix

Don’t think that fractal art has anything to do with sitting down and creating a piece all by myself. My workflow is better described by the process of finding a combination of pseudo-random parameters that speak to my imagination and tweaking them into a presentable expression.

However, in spite of this seeming randomness, I’m never surprised to see the same themes emerge time and time again. The essence of a concept often seems to find its way into my image by its own will, instead of being depicted deliberately.

An old mythological friend of mine is visiting more frecuently these days, even though I wasn’t particularly looking for him. Of course he’s “just” a symbol, representing something that supposedly doesn’t exist in the physical sense, but let me point out that magic only appears in your life once you start believing in it.

Imagination to image to reality. Might that be the lesson he carries?

Peace

Slade has done it again. He took a simple concept and put it into words in a way that has deep implications. His latest post, Spinning your Story, talks about how we can transform the stories of our own life simply through a new perspective. The Stories that No Longer Serve You, the original piece that inspired his follow-up, is also purely magical. These two posts were the firestarters of what I’m writing about here, the changes I’ve been going through recently.

Our continual experience of this life is nothing more but a single moment traveling along the axis of time, changing at every interval. That is our prime human quality, our ability to evolve, to move away from the things we no longer wish for, to align our lives with our self declared purpose. In short, spinning our stories.

I used to be - still am, to some extent - a violent person. My emotions have carried me away more times than I can count, bringing me right to the edge, thankfully allowing me to stop right before irreversibly crossing the line. But after much searching within me for the cause of this seemingly unwanted behaviour, I came to a baffling conclusion: the energy behind these impulses I have felt isn’t something bad; it’s actually the source of my passion, my inspiration. The violent states I have found my mind in are too often just a way for my spirit to express a primal, creative urge that I haven’t really given an opportunity to come forward through other means.

I realize that I am able to transform the violence I feel into something different. Chaos can be destruction, but also creation - ultimately, both of these opposites join in a single circle of endless transformation. Physical matter continually changes form; oceans to clouds to rain to rivers, and so on. The same also applies to the matter of the mind, the heart and the spirit.

Now I finally have an explanation for those spontaneous bursts of passion overcoming me from time to time, those rare but overwhelmingly strong urges to create art, causing actual, physical pain to me if I don’t drop everything to follow them to the artistic extremes they will inevitably lead me.

That is what happened to me that other day when I made a fractal that expressed pure violence, an energy that burst out of me right onto the digital canvas, interrupting the midst of a regular, dull day at my job. It urged me to say what I couldn’t find words for at the time, releasing a vital passion from deep within me, making me feel like my spiritual lifeblood was being splattered across the screen.

It’s hard to explain if you haven’t lived it. My spirit was screaming, forcing me sit up and take notice; Social inhibitions and self-imposed responsibilities faded away, leaving room only for pure creative instinct. A long confined energy was liberated in the midst of a whirlpool of conflicting feelings. It was simultaneously maddening and exhiliarating.

Since that day, I have been consciously spinning my story, transforming a life of frustration, stress and repressed creativity into that of an artist on the path to self-discovery. Choosing to gain my bread elsewhere allows me to fully delve into my work without tainting it by thoughts of profit and marketability. I am starting to develop a sense of compassion, total acceptance of all the elements present in my life. I finally feel that I am beginning to know what I stand for. I am decyphering the message, and if there was only one thing I could pass on to others in my lifetime, it would be this:

All human beings are capable of creative expression. Rather than having you admire my art, I’d rather inspire you to make your own, whatever form it takes. Not all works of art are free, but Art, the right to create it, to feel it, to express it, is. Art is larger than any category we could slap on it. It’s so much more than just painting, sculpting, writing or making movies. It is a way of life, a way to express our divine spark in every action we take.

This has always been the underlying current of my blog, but now I have finally found the clarity to put it into words. This is a rather long post by my standards, and to wrap it up, I’d like to share with you a new spin I’ve put on a fractal you’re already familiar with, mixing up the same ingredients into something totally different, yet strangely familiar. I am calling it peace.

Let it Flow

I’ve been planning to open up my first passive income stream for a while now, so around end of last year I took the leap and got my first batch of illustrations approved by Shutterstock, a stock photography site which also takes fractals and other digital images.

I have made $ 5.25 so far. Doesn’t look like much at all, but considering that I have uploaded very few illustrations (with hundreds more to come), I can definitely see some potential here. Even if it doesn’t add up to much in the end, the main reason I’m doing this is because it’s a passive income stream, and with no money investment required, I don’t really have anything to lose.

That is actually a very important point. I’d rather risk a little wasted time than a missed opportunity. I see all too many people frustrated over their financial situations, but most of them don’t do a thing about it except complaining and daydreaming.

Invoking abundance over and over again will probably make you feel a rush of positive energy every time, but the surest way to channel some actual cash right into your pockets is to open up and just let it flow - in both ways.

The value you provide goes out into the world, a tiny part of your soul contained in the wrapping of your choice - little bits of color in my case. Sooner or later an answer will come, in the form of physical tokens; bits of metal, paper or data representing the value you’ve added to humanity at large.

This exchange can be very invigorating indeed. I’m still trying to find my way around the peculiar creative challenge that working in the stock environment poses, so I’ll have to post about that on a future occasion. In the meantime, stay tuned!

If you’re interested in Shutterstock as a photographer, graphic designer or for any other reason, the following affiliate links will take you to the site.

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