A Portrait of the Artist in the Contemporary World

What is an artist? Most dictionaries will answer to this question as being a person who creates things through great skill and imagination. Concept board artist can be created on virtually anything; something simple like a poster board, a cork board tacked into a vintage frame, clip boards, dangling from a makeshift clothesline or even directly on the wall.

Talent, skill, creativity are the necessary tools for being an artist from my point of view. Mastering well the techniques, having courage to experiment at times, not standing still, not being a prisoner of repetitive schemes are also of vital importance. Yet, I see all of these as making part of a well-trained artist, and being only a well-trained artist is reductive.

In my opinion, an artist – a painter, to better put it, since this is what I want to talk about – should have something more than great technical skills and even imagination. She/He has to have vision! Vision that should come from the heart and soul of that artist. She/He should be humane but keep inside the glimpses of eternity, the memory of never-ending spaces, places and thoughts, the memory of worlds that seem to come from different dimensions. She/He should be in contact with higher realms. The artist should be free and not constrained to his age artistic ‘fashion’, to what the others expect him to create, to what the art market dictates, in order to make a living out of his art. Not that this is wrong, but I am talking here about the pure concept of being an artist. The one who has courage to hold tight on her/his convictions, on her/his, in the end, own style of painting, on her/his uniqueness. An artist should be one who is not afraid of traveling new paths with the conviction and resolution of a mad hatter without bothering about being considered one. The history of art is full of such examples. Van Gogh is only one such artist who created no matter what, kept painting irrespective of the non-appreciation of his contemporary fellow artists and people.

When painting, an artist should put his heart on the canvas, the brush strokes should be in fact his soul strokes and the final product – the painting – should be the perfect illustration of his thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences. That painting is a part of her/his soul shared with the world, a world that may see itself reflected in it, with all its doubts, fears, happiness, love, etc.

When I look at a painting, I seek moments of contemplation, I seek answers to questions I might have, inspiration and suggestions for situations I am going through. In my opinion, a painting should be both a mirror (reflecting your life) and a window (gives you a different perspective of the same problem) or creates worlds which you hold inside your soul, your imagination, but never had the chance to actually see them. I need a painting to ‘talk’ to me, I need to ‘listen’ to its ‘sounds’.

Our contemporary art movement consists in keys which are stuck on the canvas, two lines drawn on a huge cardboard, two brush strokes of two different colours, straws or matches covered in oil paint and thrown on the canvas in an illogical ‘ordered’ manner. Well, I might be obtuse, but this kind of art does not wake up my spirit, does not enrich my days and I categorise it under the title ‘Kitsch’. If one gives a brush and some watercolors to a child, she/he does a better job in painting lines, and swirls, etc. but nobody has ever considered putting up an art show in a gallery with her/his drawings and calling them ‘invaluable works of art’. Yet, again I come and say, art is free, consequently the artist should be free too. Each and every artist is free to choose the style she/he feels more comfortable with and so are the collectors or admirers of art.

The idea is that, I for one, would have loved to see more aesthetic art and more visionary artists in the galleries and on the pages of art magazines.

Do such artists still exist? Yes, and I had the fortune of beautifying my days with the works of one such artist, Ric Nagualero. Which is his art style? ‘Philosophism’ he likes to call it, since his paintings are thoughts, answers to the questions one might have, put on canvas. What is his philosophy? ‘Where thoughts become paintings’. This mixture of intellect, imagery, wisdom, and beauty is what makes all the difference. A work of art should be like this: a little cryptic, with a spiritual reality in it, which is not immediately apparent to senses, intelligent, illustrating the communion with a higher realm.

No, I am not an artist, in case you were wondering. I am one who simply loves art and I am writing here my thoughts and feelings about what I think art means. So, do not take this as a valuable study made by a connoisseur, but as a mere opinion coming from my heart.

Art means aesthetic beauty, simplicity, colour, shape. This is what I expect from the artistic movement nowadays. Artist means heart on canvas, vision, wit, meanings and thoughts conveyed through colours and brush strokes.

Let your soul quench its thirst of aesthetic beauty! I am sure it will thank you…

Join the international artist, for a unique aesthetic experience on http://facebook.com/nagualero

Join me on Facebook, on The Whispering Voice page, and be part of a world of stories.

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How much will van signwriting cost me?

GETTING signwriting for your van can be good for business.

It’s reckoned that, typically, about 3000 people an hour will see it. So it’s useful advertising. It may also help clinch deals. How? If you are looking to rebrand with a complete new image, or just after a single banner, then give us a call or pop us an email request and our signwriters Sydney are happy to assist you.

In a survey by van leasing firm Vanarama, 59 per cent of respondents said that seeing a company logo on the van gave them confidence in the quality of work to be done – and the younger the customer, the more emphasis they put on this. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, this rose to virtually three-quarters (74%).

Scan trade forums for views on getting signwriting for your van and most people say: do it. Typical comments are: “I got it done and the reaction has been really positive” and “I’ve had work because of it”.

So what are the options for getting signwriting for your van? And what will it cost?

Most people go for vinyl signwriting. This ranges from basic one-colour lettering on the bonnet or doors to a full ‘wrap’, which means encasing the van’s bodywork in vinyl. In between there are partial wraps and large vinyl panels on the side, back and bonnet.

Signwriters can put the vinyl signwriting on the van for you or, with smaller signage, you can fit it yourself.

An alternative to vinyl is metallic signage. We take you through the pros and cons of that below, as well as cost. But first, the most popular option: vinyl.

Vinyl signwriting – pro fit

Get the signwriters to design, manufacture and fit your vinyl signwriting and you’re looking at between £175 and £600 plus VAT.

Why the wide discrepancy?

Because it depends how complex and extensive your design is. But the average cost is about £250-£350 plus VAT for medium vans and £300-£600 plus VAT for large ones. That’s for basic to medium coverage.

For medium to high coverage, reckon on upto about £450 plus VAT for medium vans and up to about £800 plus VAT for large ones.

For wraps, as opposed to signage, the price rises.

A partial wrap of a medium van is typically £650 to £1000 plus VAT and for a large van it’s £800 to £1350 plus VAT.

For a full wrap, you’re looking at roughly £1150-£1750 plus VAT for a medium van and £1350-£2500 plus VAT for a large van.

The pros will fit vinyl signage to your van in about two to three hours. Most signwriters will travel to where your van is to fit signage but it’s often a bit cheaper to get it fitted at the signwriter’s workshop. For a full wrap, they’ll need your van in the workshop for one or two days.

Vinyl signwriting – DIY fitting

Typical prices for basic signwriting are £75 for a small van, £95 for a medium van and £115 for a large van. This price will include a fitting kit and full DIY instructions.

Don’t be surprised to see higher prices than that. For a MWB Transit, two sides, front and rear can be £110 plus VAT, or £90 plus VAT for two sides. Signwriting on the back can be typically £40 plus VAT and £30 plus VAT for the bonnet.

A LWB Transit will cost the same for the bonnet and doors, but the longer sides need more coverage. Budget on about £100 plus VAT for two sides and £125 plus VAT for both sides, back and bonnet.

In planning your design, try to ensure that the vinyl doesn’t straddle panel gaps, mouldings or feature lines. That would make it harder for you to fit. Pros will be able to leave a seamless finish over such irregularities but amateurs will struggle. A good signwriter will confine the vinyl signage to the van’s flat panels for a DIY fitting.

You can also buy small, basic vinyl signwriting on eBay.

For a two-colour design on both sides, the front and rear, reckon on paying about £35 for a small van, £45 for a medium one and £55 for a large van. You can get simple signage for the bonnet or back window for about £10.

These will be three or four lines of brief text – company name, phone number and website. We’ve no direct experience of the quality of eBay suppliers, so check the seller’s feedback before buying.

Magnetic signs

A magnetic sign can be left on a van or swapped between vehicles. This can be handy if the same van is used for different brands – just swap the brand panels over.

Or if you rent a van for occasional work, you can instantly stamp your identity on it. Clients will be none the wiser.

Avoid using magnetic panels on the bonnet – they don’t like the wind turbulence or the heat from the engine. But using them on the sides and back is fine. If you’re going to swap signs between vehicles, smaller signs give you a wider choice of potential vehicles.

Avoid sticking them on panels that have curves or features lines. They won’t sit properly. Instead, go for a flat panel. Measure up the panel before ordering and leave a border of about 50mm/2in or so. This will look smart and ensure that the metallic signage doesn’t unintentionally overspill the flat panel.

Prices start at about £15 for a magnetic panel 150mm tall by 100mm wide. Expect to pay about £30 for one that’s 400mm tall and 1.0m wide, and £50 for 200mm tall by 2.0m wide.

For a magnetic sign that’s 500mm tall and 3.0m wide, budget on about £100. For truly massive ones, say 600mm tall by 6.0 wide, you can be looking at the wrong side of £200. You’ll need to add VAT on top of all those prices.

But expect the price to include full colour digital printing, a laminated front that is resistant to UV, scratches and weather, and the option of using your own graphics.

Go for magnetic panels that are at least 0.8mm thick to ensure they don’t slip down on the van – or, worse, blow off at motorway speeds.

Not just the price

Don’t just go for the cheapest quote.

Shoddy-looking signwriting is worse than no signwriting. It projects a bad image about your company to prospective customers.

You want signwriting to look professional from day one and remain looking that way on day 1000 and beyond. So keep one eye on cost and the other on quality.

The signwriting industry is unregulated so ensure that you’re happy with the quality of the firm’s work before giving them your business.

Go on personal recommendations where possible. Failing that, tell the firm you want to contact some of their recent customers. If they aren’t instantly forthcoming, look elsewhere. You’ll find plenty online.

Digging Up the Artistic Gold Found Within

Concept artist start work at the beginning of pre-production, up to six months before filming is due to begin. During the staggering memorable fragile years from nine to twelve, you experienced your artistic self in such a way as never before or since. Most emphatically during the phase from eight to nine, a calibrated mechanistic artistic phase slipped in. This liberally gifted induced period opened a portal of instinctive talent from which you will draw for the remainder of your life. (In essence, you were grown by the end of this point, though the tender age did not necessarily reflect your innate maturity and society certainly would not have accepted the reality of this outrageous statement.) Nevertheless, the artistic vision of your life was formed and you were acutely aware of your inbred talent. The things that occurred during this most blatantly injected artistically sensitive period from 9 to 12 would determine the temperature of the road you would most likely travel until you reconnected with your latent gifts. It does not matter whether the time frame was obviously productive, non productive, abusive or flourishing, the scenario retained for you untold possibilities that would paint the canvas of the next forty four years. During this winding road of inductive dramatic scrambling and rearranging, you would/will find several pieces of the puzzle of your particular life’s purpose, which left uninvestigated, would cause massive blurring and confusion.

If you would take a moment to go back to the specific year, beginning two weeks before your 8th birthday and run concurrently until your two weeks after your 9th birthday for a period of approximately 13 months, you will able to follow along to decipher the art’ message offered. Remember back most specifically the exact 13 th month period of the 2 years involved. Where did you physically reside? More than likely, you were in the 3 rd grade of school. IF by chance you can not recall your 3 rd grade teacher, the blurred memory will be highlighted within the entire 4 th grade year. Do you remember that’ teacher? Do you remember the circumstances of where you were residing? There are so many viable clues linking your current personality to that poignant part of your existence. {Parts, that you may or may not recognize, as important to you, now.} The reason you may not be aware that you possess an incredibly defined essential artistic nature’ is because when you were young, the ARTIST in you was dismissed, discredited, disavowed or disenfranchised. This unfortunate event could have taken place in a variety of ways, not he least being that you felt inadequate to produce what was expected of you artistically. You felt you either had to compete or compare or both. Daunting as the task set before was, you felt embarrassed to offer your artistic self since “IT” was more precious you then as opposed to any other period in your life.

During the precarious period of your life from the ages of 9 to 12, the most influential and crucial artistic stage presented itself. Depending upon the situation, circumstances, events and people who surrounded you at that time, the “ART IMPETUS” was either nurtured/supported or devalued and denigrated. In other words, whatever was going on in your particular world at that specific time frame, determined how much of an artist you perceive yourself to be. Unless you were recognized and encouraged to pursue your individualistic artistic expressions, that vital natural and convenient’ artistic essence of yours got shut down, closed off, pent up like a caged animal. During this fragile time, if you were placed in a position to either compare your work or to compete with another in order to “show yourself worthy and accepted”, a silent death occurred which would take years to resurrect. Because of the ignorance and inadvertent (deliberate or not) neglect associated with our natural artistic impulse, we end up carrying around useless baggage that prevent us from de-assing’ certain programs of conditioned thought and/or self-sabotaging beliefs that confine and constrict our creative attempts.

How many of you ever wanted to sing but never tried because you were afraid someone would make fun of you? The same principle is applied to ART, MUSIC, DRAMA, and of course simple honest communication. Unless you are willing to search and retrieve those buried artistic aspects of yourself, which you have never been properly introduced to, you will remain a mystery to yourself and others. Your relationships will suffer because of it and you will remain unhappy and unfulfilled seeking outside remedies for inner barricades. In order to kick down the barriers’ that prevent you from being a natural born artist, you will be required to stop bad mouthing yourself or others who you deem more fortunate or talented. You have not been robbed. You were never going to meet these aspects of yourself until you were ready, anyway. If these words resonate with you, it is only because you are ready to pursue the voyage of yourself. {A launching of new indescribable possibilities stand before you ready for you venture into.} Moments of hesitation will be cast into the sea of forgetfulness never to be remembered anymore. Self-doubt, fear of change, and the thoughts of not having any talent will be swallowed up by your natural desire to express yourself artistically. An instinctive GUT detector’ enables you to contact your lost/hidden artistic needs, as long as you are willing to move through the door of self-delusion. By careful study and application, you will be able to break through that wall of self-incrimination into a field your unrealized artistic potential.

As you begin to get still and listen to your inner soul’s yearning, you will discover a world of untold merit. You will literally be stunned by the accuracy of the things you know without knowing how you know them. You must trust your gut, however without reservation. It is the sole intent of your inner compass to provide an avenue of immaculate perception, where you no longer take for granted’ the exquisite beauty found within the mundane, dull, and seemingly lifeless artifacts peppering your world. Without having to dig and search, “What are the closest photographs you have near you?” (Wherever you are sitting) These photographs are designed to elicit a response in you. Whether the response is negative or positive, matters little. What does matter is that it makes you ponder.

Next, what is the first painting you see? The combination of photographs and the one in your face’ painting have been placed together arbitrarily (no matter how far apart they are in physical location) to act as a measuring stick of your present circumstances. You may feel some of the photographs and that painting have been haphazardly placed together. That immediate sensation too is an individualistic artistic response. Either way, the photographs are depicted as RAW symbols of expressions that will speak to you, according to where your consciousness resides. Also, because there are two parts of your artistic nature that needs acknowledging, (one who knows; one who doubts) you will have inadvertently fixed the photographs in your mind, {probably not being able to elicit the real picture the first time you look at them.) Be patient with yourself.

This reaction is part of the artistic development process. The painting plays a significant role in opening for you a panoramic view of things that are connected to your individual destiny. So that whenever you see or think about the object in question, a certain revelation of, “what’s blocking you” will become apparent. And, just as important you will be constantly reminded: it is in the ordinary “things” that the extraordinary is found. Because you have been indoctrinated to strive for perfection, you have forgotten how magnificently beautiful the so called ordinary things really are. No other person can take this cosmically enlightening journey but you. You will be in a type of private cosmic therapy; it is the art that will guide you in all truth.

Its fundamental premise belies the notion that we are separate from any portion, element, attribute, or “THING” that makes up our world. This exhaustively researched method presents the concept that: Everything in life is interconnected, including every single word, sight, smell, taste and feeling that one encounters in the run of a day . Not a person, place or object is exempt. If you interacted with it’, it’ has meaning for you. Though people often ignore or dismiss the obvious evidence that supports the appearance of various signs, symbols, clues, omens, as representational personal truths, the fact remains: “if you saw it’, there’s a valid reason for it’s recognition and validation. Though everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be for reasons we can’t see, it’s important for us, as mortals, to investigate the possibilities. What “if” there really is a Divine Purpose for our lives? Wouldn’t you want to know what that purpose might entail? Wouldn’t you want to discover how and why that purpose related to you? And, most especially if that so-called purpose could eradicate the continual sense of frustration, monotony and restlessness you experience so often.

You are here to produce something of the worthwhile value that you alone can express, connect and enjoy. The determination of that value resonates from the effort, energy, time, money and interest you are willing to invest. {Extremely personal choice: you pursue only what interests you!} Unless you take it upon yourself to explore (all that you possibly can) about you, no other success you ever obtained will compensate. The arduous task of unveiling you to you’ requires that you first eliminate the idea that anyone, NO MATTER WHO IT IS OR HOW MUCH POWER, AUTHORITY, AND INFLUENCE THEY EXERT, has the right to determine for you what path you should pursue or not pursue while you are alive. They are not nor will they ever be in a position to decide for you “What’s best.” Hah! You’re the very best you can be at any given moment for that moment. You are currently in the artistic processing mode and will continue to be for the rest of your natural born life.

Whatever you choose to do and however you choose to do it is all the RIGHT you need to know. No one can say whether your art, music, drama, writing, or any other individual method of expressing yourself is good or not. If you have produced it, IT is worthy. You are governed and maintained by the same innate compassing devise that so-called worthy artists reflect in their work. True ART is expressed by saying what, how, when, where and to whom exactly what you want to say without feeling the need to be praised or validated. If you are glad you produced it, for no other reason than for the sheer joy you derived from creating it, THAT is enough. Don’t feel ashamed, afraid, humiliated, inferior, worried, or intimidated by others. Art is spontaneous natural convenient creative energy! It moves through you while it liberates you at the same time. Recognizing yourself as a genuine artist is no doubt a frightening and horrific experience. Only the inherently determined and ruthlessly focused will survive to penetrate and forge their innate masterful visions.

Cosmic Therapist, Author, Artist, Entertainer, Teacher, Speaker, Singer/Songwriter.
Married 39 years with 6 children and 11 grandchildren and a native of North Carolina.

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