Hi,
If you know about websites for arts and crafts, you may know that one of the most beautiful was 1000Markets.com. It was recently shut down by its ownwers and the links for all our works on it now go to another website that we had no choice in selecting.
We refugees from 1000Markets find the new site a bit too schlocky for our tastes, but many are just leaving our work there....you never know. So if you click on any of my old 1000Markets links you will wind up on the other site's main page, and not even in my "booth" as promised.
Some of us have found a new but attractive site, and I have settled down there: http://www.zibbet.com/Egilpatr
My entire portfolio is there. This is an Aussie enterprise with taste and good manners. Have a look!!
Happy Holidays everyone!!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Remembering The Good News From Iran
Starting on June 13, 2009, people in Tehran, Iran, poured out in their hundreds of thousands, defying official bans and suffering killings and brutality to protest the elections and the regime that betrayed their votes. The demonstrators adopted green as their unifying color. There were street protests through June, and as late as December 7, 2009.
This movement and its images was recorded, not only through press reports, but through all the social networks, and the use of proxies when those were banned. I was moved to capture that movement on canvas, and Green Tehran is the result. It was a hard painting to bring off because of the detail in the crowd. I show images of three young women protesters superimposed on an image of one of the demonstrations. I was able to find references to two photo-journalists for two of the 4 images I used as a basis for the painting: Oliver Laban-Mattei and Behrouz Mehrimages.
I hope you find this moving. It is my tribute.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
I Don't Know About All Those Social Networks
So here I am again, feeling like a curmudgeon. Why do I need Facebook, Twitter, or any of those places? If you are already my friend, I prefer private letters via email. Or a telephone call! If you are not my friend, you can find me by Googling my name.
I am told to go to those places to sell my paintings; but I feel like a hooker networking just for that. It takes endless time and skills I barely master to post on those places. And if I have to keep up with all those sites, where do I find time for what I really do?
And now comes a New York Times article that questions the effects on our brains from all that technology. I don't want to be a mechanical robot.
So, you ask, why are you on a blog?
Dunno!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
I Understood What Is Going On In Our Economy in 2008!
I found the comments below in my folder I call "Musings," and think I knew more then than I do now, so I would like to share that with you, a bit updated.
A friend got me thinking about what has been in the back of my mind about what is happening to our economy. What little I remember of what I used to understand goes like this.
Our system of capitalism must go into periods of business cycle because, on the material front, the full value of real things produced by workers for consumption are not given back to them as income; some goes to the owners of capital, in the form of profits. Not all the profits are spent to buy back the goods and services produced, and, eventually, there is too much lying around, unbought, and there is a bust in the cycle. This includes the production of things that are produced to make other things (capital goods).
As the repetitions of production periods continue, this "surplus" becomes so great that inventories accumulate, which are not being bought. This includes the capital goods products that make things as well as consumer goods. In our period the things produced include services as well as tangible products.
Lying as a veil over all this is the world of finance, in which a section of owners of capital lend each other parts of the surplus to carry out their production operations. But, if the valuation of these financial dealings gets too far away from the true value of the underlying products, the accumulations of the surpluses gets out of balance, and the system generates crisis. The sections of the capitalist class who do not produce wealth but only move it around can make things break down despite a healthy demand for the products and a healthy capacity to meet that with supply.
At a further remove from reality is the market for the ownership of the businesses: the stock market, where pieces of ownership are traded based on expectations of future worth; nothing is produced in this market, but expectations of how it will fair affect the ability of capitalists to use the surplus to continue production in the real world.
Things break down not because of the producers of wealth, but because of the manipulators of that wealth. That is what the real estate bubble meant for the production of housing, and what we are facing now on all levels of production, as producers are not financed to continue production and workers are not able to buy what they produce. A depression comes when production has been stopped in a feedback loop that eats itself up.
Capitalism is set up to "rescue" the owners of the productive capital, not those who are employed to continue to produce. In the Great Depression, capitalism was forced to find a way to shore up the workers while the cycle rebalanced itself. Unemployment insurance, social security, federal deposit insurance, are examples of a network that was created outside of "naked" capitalism to help keep people alive during the depths of the business cycle. The option was chaos or revolution.
Revolution is not on the table. The options are helping strategies or chaos. The poor are always the ones who pay in illness, unemployment, and homelessness, because they have no power...unless they band together. Our culture used to make the workers feel personally responsible for the failures. You are supposed to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.
In such a material world, understanding of all this can only lead to pessimism, whether it be self blaming or railing against the system. Spiritual beliefs make a difference. Because in a modern view, realizing that mass movements of people can push back against the system creates the positive energy of hope.
It took struggle to get trade unions, social security, market regulations, etc. It will take a modern day version of that to help protect one another now. And into this came our recent elections. Obama represents a force to at least see the underlying causes and deal with protections for the workers, the poor, the defenseless. But the naked violence of the capitalist class stands poised to keep that from happening.
All this goes on within our particular form of socially oriented capitalism; will we still defend our workers or let them drown?
Spirit affects what we put out into the world and what we get back. Good energy helps us see what to do without the distraction of hatred; it helps us find one another so we can unite. Spirit lets us reach out to one another; and I pray Spirit will win over the hatred that is spewing forth all around us.
A friend got me thinking about what has been in the back of my mind about what is happening to our economy. What little I remember of what I used to understand goes like this.
Our system of capitalism must go into periods of business cycle because, on the material front, the full value of real things produced by workers for consumption are not given back to them as income; some goes to the owners of capital, in the form of profits. Not all the profits are spent to buy back the goods and services produced, and, eventually, there is too much lying around, unbought, and there is a bust in the cycle. This includes the production of things that are produced to make other things (capital goods).
As the repetitions of production periods continue, this "surplus" becomes so great that inventories accumulate, which are not being bought. This includes the capital goods products that make things as well as consumer goods. In our period the things produced include services as well as tangible products.
Lying as a veil over all this is the world of finance, in which a section of owners of capital lend each other parts of the surplus to carry out their production operations. But, if the valuation of these financial dealings gets too far away from the true value of the underlying products, the accumulations of the surpluses gets out of balance, and the system generates crisis. The sections of the capitalist class who do not produce wealth but only move it around can make things break down despite a healthy demand for the products and a healthy capacity to meet that with supply.
At a further remove from reality is the market for the ownership of the businesses: the stock market, where pieces of ownership are traded based on expectations of future worth; nothing is produced in this market, but expectations of how it will fair affect the ability of capitalists to use the surplus to continue production in the real world.
Things break down not because of the producers of wealth, but because of the manipulators of that wealth. That is what the real estate bubble meant for the production of housing, and what we are facing now on all levels of production, as producers are not financed to continue production and workers are not able to buy what they produce. A depression comes when production has been stopped in a feedback loop that eats itself up.
Capitalism is set up to "rescue" the owners of the productive capital, not those who are employed to continue to produce. In the Great Depression, capitalism was forced to find a way to shore up the workers while the cycle rebalanced itself. Unemployment insurance, social security, federal deposit insurance, are examples of a network that was created outside of "naked" capitalism to help keep people alive during the depths of the business cycle. The option was chaos or revolution.
Revolution is not on the table. The options are helping strategies or chaos. The poor are always the ones who pay in illness, unemployment, and homelessness, because they have no power...unless they band together. Our culture used to make the workers feel personally responsible for the failures. You are supposed to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.
In such a material world, understanding of all this can only lead to pessimism, whether it be self blaming or railing against the system. Spiritual beliefs make a difference. Because in a modern view, realizing that mass movements of people can push back against the system creates the positive energy of hope.
It took struggle to get trade unions, social security, market regulations, etc. It will take a modern day version of that to help protect one another now. And into this came our recent elections. Obama represents a force to at least see the underlying causes and deal with protections for the workers, the poor, the defenseless. But the naked violence of the capitalist class stands poised to keep that from happening.
All this goes on within our particular form of socially oriented capitalism; will we still defend our workers or let them drown?
Spirit affects what we put out into the world and what we get back. Good energy helps us see what to do without the distraction of hatred; it helps us find one another so we can unite. Spirit lets us reach out to one another; and I pray Spirit will win over the hatred that is spewing forth all around us.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Here I am in Alien Territory
Hi, whoever you are!
All I really want to do is show people my paintings, because, like all artists, I long to share what I see with my eyes and paint with my heart. I am a fine art painter of landscapes, people, still lifes, and a few abstracts. I guess you can call me a contemporary realist. I am infatuated with what I see. My strengths are in my use of color and composition, but I think I have some surprising takes on content.
I am a second career artist. When I came back to art, I started by doing drawings and working in oil, but now I work in acrylic on stretched canvas with painted sides. Some of my work is framed. After many years of college-teaching, doing research, writing, some of which is about health care (yeah), I retired and came back to my first love, painting, and I never look back.
When I came back I was moved to paint affirmations of life and a celebration of beauty (See Misty Light); but recently I have also painted beauty contrasted with the "terrible" in the real world of our time. I juxtapose images of the Iraqi war, and Afghanistan with serene and beautiful scenes of American life. Lately I have been working with arresting images from public photos (See In Afghanistan). I hope that people will connect with what is going on "In The World." I also express my joy in life in my landscapes, people, and still lifes; I only paint what I love to see.
So here I am in a blog. And you can see all my work at http://www.zibbet.com/Egilpatr
All I really want to do is show people my paintings, because, like all artists, I long to share what I see with my eyes and paint with my heart. I am a fine art painter of landscapes, people, still lifes, and a few abstracts. I guess you can call me a contemporary realist. I am infatuated with what I see. My strengths are in my use of color and composition, but I think I have some surprising takes on content.
I am a second career artist. When I came back to art, I started by doing drawings and working in oil, but now I work in acrylic on stretched canvas with painted sides. Some of my work is framed. After many years of college-teaching, doing research, writing, some of which is about health care (yeah), I retired and came back to my first love, painting, and I never look back.
When I came back I was moved to paint affirmations of life and a celebration of beauty (See Misty Light); but recently I have also painted beauty contrasted with the "terrible" in the real world of our time. I juxtapose images of the Iraqi war, and Afghanistan with serene and beautiful scenes of American life. Lately I have been working with arresting images from public photos (See In Afghanistan). I hope that people will connect with what is going on "In The World." I also express my joy in life in my landscapes, people, and still lifes; I only paint what I love to see.
So here I am in a blog. And you can see all my work at http://www.zibbet.com/Egilpatr
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
