The Art of Color

I've been working with color lately on the designs at my store, Ursine Logic . Like a lot of people, I was very amused and disturbed by Bush's remark about "human-animal cloning." I saw this as one of those design opportunities just screaming to be transformed into a t-shirt. However, I ran into a problem whenever I started to work on a design.

The problem was not a shortage of ideas, but that I tend to avoid the political in my shop. So much of what I read every day and talk about has to do with politics of some kind. I am a junkie for stuff like that. I want to know what crazy thing people are swallowing, what distraction they are buying to avoid hearing whatever truth is being buried in the news media's primetime backyards. Politics is the ultimate ant farm with ants who compete to tell the biggest lie, fight the light of day to cover up the biggest secrets, and run around in the dark pretending to believe whatever will allow them to steal the most. I can't stop watching in appalled fascination.

But my shop is my break from all that. It is a place where I can focus on my love of dogs and cats, where I can appreciate the frail beauty of flowers, and where I can try and capture in images the ever expanding search for personal individuality, the many layers of spirituality that grows from nature and from within. It is my therapy in a world where others rely on antidepressants, recreational drugs, and alcohol. My strange art calms me in the way pills calm others. It gives me a solid center in a chaotic world.

Usually my art stayed pretty close to the line I learned to draw from for web graphics. I didn't get risky with colors. I didn't stray into the realm of the "true artist" as I perceived those mystical beings who could pick up a paint brush, a piece of chalk, a pencil, and create so easily what I could only do on a computer.

But it has been gray here in the Northwest. It has rained a lot. It has been cold. Color is my rebellion against the continual onslaught of one idea. I am like that. If you give me constant instead of variable, I rebel.

I am afraid of only one thing in life, really, and that is stagnation of the species. Without change, we rot badly. We go to our end without dignity, without honor, without any purpose but the willful annihilation of a species that spent a lifetime being led by the nose to feed on government crap.

Color is my voice against that distressing eventuality.

The Art of Color