Paul Gamble is an Australian painter who anonymously contributed some scanned images of his work to the Synchronized Chaos group on Facebook. We asked around and located him for an online interview.

You may friend Paul Gamble on Facebook and can probably contact him via one of the sites he mentions below where he features his work.

First of all – would you like to describe your process in creating one of your pictures? How does the image get from your head to the computer screen? What steps/media do you use?

Pictures usually come to me via creative imagination, by waking or lucid dreaming, day dreaming you could say. Some images are strong and immediate while other may rumage around in my head for years. All my art is based on drawing, either from my imagination, real objects and things or a combination of both. Sometimes I just copy a picture of something I like just as I did as a boy. It depends on the image.

I usually paint in either acrylics, oils, or synthetic polymer. Mostly on canvas.

Who are some of your favorite artists? Whose work do you admire and enjoy looking at, whether it has inspired you or not?

Where do you find inspiration for your art? How do you get your ideas?

Pictures can come from a feeling, a thought, an experience, a word, a song, a sneeze.
Everything I can see, with my eyes, and mind, is art.

I am an artist, so the majority of my brainspace and time is consumed with art. The creation process not only manifests in a physical way via making art but also appears to me in the physical living universe as well.

How long have you been making these pictures? Has your style changed over time?

I have been drawing pictures and image making since childhood. Painting seriously for about twenty years now. My style hasn’t changed a great deal even though I continually change what and how I paint, from picture to picture. I am always searching for something new, that special thing, experimentation is never ending. Make as many mistakes as possible just to see what happens.

Some of your artwork seems to have a fanciful, almost whimsical tone (sorry if that’s not your intention!!) Is there a reason for the mood you’re trying to create? What are you trying to get across to viewers?

I hope my sense of humour comes through in a work, I also hope viewers are intigued and provoked enough to contemplate their own existence in the universe.

You use a lot of bright colors in your work that makes it stand out. How do you decide on a color scheme for a particular piece?

Colour scemes always are a self referral process that happens within a picture. I love colour so I always try to combine them to each others advantage. I want my pictures to stand out because I want people to look at them, I want them to be noticed. Bright colour is a good indication of mood.

What about your work, in your view, is different and distinct from that of other graphic artists? What have you innovated or done differently?

Things I do differently? I make paint into 3d objects. Paintsculptures, I call them. Still perfecting that experiment.

Also, my whole egg theory as a conceptual basis for my work. I am unsure if anyone else has or does that.

My inspiration and ideas come from the idea of the egg. Eggs as a universal symbol for creation, as a shape, as a concept, as math, as metaphor, as biology, as a belief system, as the sacred and the mundane, micro and macro. It is what relates us to all life. Everything comes from and is egg.

I notice a lot of anatomical detail in your work, especially the skulls and the birds in flight. Do you have a biology background? Do you work from live or actual animals as models?

I don’t have a biology background – the animal motif stems from my egg concept. Where I can, I use real objects, otherwise I use pictures as reference. Drawing from life is preferred but not always possible.

Where can people find your work online? Are you selling your work online? (We at Synchronized Chaos always encourage people to patronize our featured artists. However, not all of our readers have Facebook.)

I’m mainly on Facebook due to there being no art gallery where I live. My website is still under construction.

Editor’s note: You may also find Paul Gamble’s work on Zazzle.com and on the pictures section of Synchronized Chaos’ editorial and planning Facebook group – Chaos Theory (our former name) on Facebook.

http://apps.new.facebook.com/merchstore/store.php?ch=paulgamble&uid=1386737177

http://www.zazzle.com/pd/find?qs=paul+gamble

Hope that’s enough. If I think of more, I will update. Gotta let the brain soak for awhile 🙂

Faracy Grouse

Faracy Grouse is an American writer originally from Minneapolis. She just moved to Britain after four years in Seville, Spain as the resident foreigner in a neighborhood where a man being seen hanging out laundry could cause a building wide sensation.

 As a child she was slow to read and write, unable to do either until the age of eight. Instead she would make up the rest of the story or draw pictures to remind herself what she was supposed to have written if asked to read aloud. Dyslexic and excruciatingly shy, she was not able to take refuge in books the way that many quiet children do. Where she excelled was in drawing and creating worlds in her mind.

 However, by the age of 11 she was a voracious reader, particularly of non-fiction books about foreign cultures. She knew from a very early age that she wanted to see the world.

 She first discovered a love for poetry at the age of 13 through an article on Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in an issue of National Geographic.

With the encouragement of a few creative English teachers, she began to write prose and poetry as a teenager.

 After studying voice, she went on to complete a degree in Anthropology and European History, marrying a man she met in Spain and having a child in the process.

During the breakdown of this marriage, she took up writing once again. This time it was to survive. She felt that she could write her way out of a terrible situation, and in the end she did.

 She has written a full-length screenplay, numerous short stories and put together several collections of poetry. She is currently working on a memoir.

Faracy would very much appreciate hearing your input about her work, and would be more than happy to discuss publication with any who may be interested.

You may contact Faracy at alumine3@gmail.com

You may read Faracy’s poetry here:

Continue reading →

Received slightly fewer submissions for October’s issue but have been able to go into greater depth with each of them. Our theme is… Transformation by Surprise, which I will explain in the next few days or so when the work goes online. For now some shoutouts for opportunities for our artists.

First of all, I recently visited San Francisco’s Valencia Street neighborhood for the Modern Times Books release party of fellow zinesters who produced a guide to community-based approaches to handling intimate partner abuse. Great stories, not technical or boring at all, full of useful information. People from around the world attended the release party, including a traveling performance troupe with members from Zimbabwe, Israel/Palestine, etc. Dropped off Synchronized Chaos cards at the shops and galleries along the way there – also planning to crosslink and mutually promote our zine and theirs (I do this with many different zines with a variety of emphases, would like to consolidate resources and publishing opportunities, promote fellow artists, and encourage networking. I also liked their pragmatic, community based approach to handling an issue without huge bureaucracy.) If you’d like one of their zines please comment here and I’ll put you in touch with them.

Also visited the San Jose Museum of Art, interesting techy Silicon Valley feel with an exhibit on robots, another on old computer memory component history, another on minimalist installations. Sci fi esque – but they take art of various styles and does NOT have to be tech oriented. Paintings, vistas, everything welcome as far as I know. They take proposals from interested visual artists for review by their curators and I took a flyer about where to submit proposals and work samples and will forward it on to anyone who comments and is interested. Preference given to CA artists but CA residence not required. They’re booked for the near future but will consider proposals for later on.

An organization I endorse, the Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, provides foreclosure intervention and counseling as well as neighborhood improvement projects. Aims to help keep people of all income levels able to own homes in Silicon Valley neighborhoods. They need a volunteer or more to revamp their www.nhssv.org website to make it brighter, more appealing, and easier to navigate. They need translation, a site map, a hits counter, etc…would love to see someone here get involved, if you know how to improve websites this would be a great portfolio and experience building project.

October issue coming soon!!

Shoutout to a social-justice and environmental blog, “Unmasking an Inconvenient Truth” (no direct connection to the Al Gore documentary) produced by fellow San Jose State students as a personal project: http://happylandmanifesto.blogspot.com/

Synchronized Chaos invites anyone and everyone to check out my very good friend’s blog (he goes by the name Sodalis, is a young autistic transgendered person living in California.) Right now he’s working towards becoming a civil rights lawyer or professor of evolutionary biology while scraping by looking for more permanent housing (he’s couch and shelter surfing at the moment) and work. He’s very articulate here, has a certain unique sense of humor and favorite pet interests.

Would love to see people read this – well-written and interesting. Describes the complex realities of life in the Bay Area for those whose minds work differently. Perhaps drop him a note of encouragement or advice while checking this out.

http://anotherautismblog.blogspot.com/

Great, varied, and currently much more navigable zine run by a great group of people: http://www.theivorytowerzine.com/index.htm

Please check them out, there’s a whole “Meet the Artists” section as well as many stories, poems, and pictures. Ivory Tower’s staff creates a theme every quarter…this time it’s horror and the macabre, next quarter the environment and planet Earth. Please feel free to spread the word and/or to submit simultaneously to Synchronized Chaos and Ivory Tower if your piece concerns nature or environmental issues – so important they should get covered by as many zines as possible 🙂

Zines. They do the artistic soul and the world good. (yes, I’m old enough to play off of that old milk industry campaign slogan!)

http://www.theivorytowerzine.com/index.htm