From the artist:
“My paintings call upon a heightened experience of nature and a modern day social constitution. The characters of my paintings are at times detached and others confrontational, and together they create a discordant atmosphere despite their picturesque first impressions.”
-Leila Cartier
lcartier@post.com
Click here to see more of the artist’s work.
About the Battlescape Series:
“With nature as the holiest of places, my paintings combine the use of landscape painting with Baroque virtuosity and illusion, anthropomorphizing natural elements, to create mysterious, monumentally scaled portraits of a spiritual journey or condition. The path of spiritual growth is often equated with internal struggle or combat between good and evil. I narrate that conflict indirectly, depicting a battleground rather than a battle itself. As sites of pleasure and pain, anxiety and tranquility, these intimate and contemplative “Battlescapes” mirror the human interior where man is constantly both revitalized and victimized by his own psychological surroundings. I use imagery – complex in signification and often steeped with literary, symbolic or historical reference – purposefully to keep secret and/or to reveal narrative.”
– Kristen van Diggelen
See more of the artist’s work at www.kristenvandiggelen.com.
Contact: kvandigg@gmail.com
No Air
i had not stopped to think about your smile and my heart beat fast as i walked up and down the terminal steps, throwing glances at the opening overflowing with next day returnees.
The streets were crowded and i could barely make you out somewhere across the spinning sea of swimming faces.
i laughed nervously feeling the slow collapse of my breathing pattern.
no air,
as we walked in our small beginning, sat cross-legged in the grass, passing a feeling back and forth.
i don’t remember if you sat next to me as we bumped and bruised our way back home or if the door was locked when we finally reached our destination.
i don’t remember if you put your hand on my face or if i could hear your heart beating through your chest.
all i can recall is the lack of oxygen escaping into me, my sure inability to breathe, the simplicity in my thoughts as there was no air.
it was getting close to midnight when i walked you down to the street.
we stood locked in mystery for what could have been a moment, might have been a lifetime.
the bus tossed itself around the corner and we left it there.
i shouted something as i crossed to other side, as i fell away from you, and then you were gone.
swallowed by the light-less street.
i sat on the stoop for a long time, engraving every second of every minute with you, into me.
i watched the pale pink of morning place its soft touch on this city.
i watched the anxious beings in their early Saturdays, pacing quickly through their thoughts.
i watched the teenage romantics make up and break up.
the mother clasping her child’s hand as she balanced the imbalance of life.
i watched myself let go of you, of this.
i watched the earth over grown inside this
and the vines wrap around it.
the tendrils of green cradle it in their arms.
and then,
i got on a plane
and left it there.
letting the air run wild through my veins.
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Iris Grace is a young poetess and San Francisco resident. To contact her about her poetry, send an email to iris_grace92@yahoo.com.
Artist Mission Statement:
“As an environmental artist, my mission is to produce murals and recycled artwork for civic exhibitions. I’ve found that art is a solution and can be used as a creative instrument for expanding people’s perception and knowledge about our environmental challenges. I enjoy organizing eco-art projects in which art is used as a way for encouraging environmentalism and awareness in young people. I’m hoping to develop more projects that merge art and conservation efforts to intensify the environmental arts genre and support a culture of young environmentalists.”
-Tree Rivera
To see more examples of Ms. Rivera’s eco-art project, visit her website at treerivera.yolasite.com.
HOW IT STARTED
It started with a smile one day.
It started with a touch.
How was I to know he felt that way,
That I could mean so much?
You hear these things sung in songs,
Or written in sweet rhymes.
You never think these things are true,
That they can happen in your time.
But hearts, they crave,
And hearts, they long,
And hearts, they run away,
Until the day that they find home,
And then forever stay.
He touched my hand.
He touched my heart.
He touched my soul as well.
Then one day I was given away,
Inside my wedding veil.
He gave me his heart.
He gave me his name.
He gave me his babies too.
And never have I regretted the day,
That to him I said “I do.”
-J’Rie Elliott
J’Rie Elliott is a poetess as well as a contributing editor of Synchronized Chaos. To contact her, send an email to dixiepoet@gmail.com
Frost Newton has been painting for over 20 years and sees his artwork as a channel for individual exploration and imagination.
Newton describes his work:
“The central core of all my paintings is a surrealist view of our reality. There is room to explore uncommon juxtapositions through our common experience. Where reality has saturated our perceptions there are seams that can come unhinged.”
Check out more of the artist’s work at www.absolutearts.com/newton.
About the work:
“My work presents invented spaces that are based on reality, but revel in artificiality. In these desolate dreamlike non-places, I subvert nature and construct or destroy architectural sites alluding to the making of a utopian and/or dystopian environment.”
– Robert Minervini
Website: www.robertminervini.com
Contact the artist: robertminervini@gmail.com