I had never seen a real rainbow. Not in a Chicago sky. I knew them only from my happy kids books…and only up there with the blue birds. So yes, color has a mystical quality—like a gateway to another dimension. It has been that way for me ever since. That’s the main reason I have been drawn to this next group of painters: The Fauves.

It was all about the palette gone mad. This merry group of French painters had a disdain for natural color, so let the sky be pink. Let the buildings be blue. Color itself had emotion apart from the form that hosted it. Here is “Charing Cross Bridge” by Andre Derain.

They put on a show in 1905 and traditionalists were outraged. Here is “The Bridge at Chatou,” by Maurice de Vlaminck. Yep, people had smoke coming out of their ears. One angry critic steamed that they were “Les Fauves.” “Wild Beasts!” The jolly Frenchmen were devastated. No, actually they loved it and became ever more merry. They proudly wore the name…at least until they went on to other things—but the bridge had been crossed.

Their credo was that if it looks red, make it the purest red. Or yellow. Here is Raoul Dufy with “Boats at Martigues.” It wasn’t that their subjects and scenes were outrageous—they’re fairly ordinary. The biggest impact? They set color loose…let it rip.

Vlaminck again: “Houses at Chatou.” Not enough attention has been paid to this little cluster of “beasts” and what they unleashed a hundred and twenty years ago. Yes, they were aware of Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, but this went further. They opened the studio door and let color-control escape. You can’t close the door after the beast has escaped. It eventually led to what so many people hate: “Modern Art.”

Henri Matisse: “Woman.” For these artists, it went beyond just moving color around to create harmonies. There was something deeper: the freedom to fly in the heavens of creativity—to see something in a way that no one ever had.

Georges Braque: “House Behind Trees.” Yes, drawing became “expressive.” Even goofy. But it had to be just as expressive—just as loose. As a result, a painting became its own destination—it didn’t have to be true to life—it didn’t have to represent nature’s reality. This was a new reality.

The Fauves unleashed the permission to paint the idea—the “something deeper.” This is my “Bright Lights.” I painted it right after “9-11.” The Capitol was a target that day but some citizens on a plane over Pennsylvania would not allow that to happen. That to me was an American bright light. The Capitol is still alive with all of its idiosyncrasies and craziness, and the sun still shines down on it…brightly.

It could also be a portrait of PTSD. That day was a trauma for all Americans and that has not abated. But the sun will still shine down on us, if we let it.

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In the Renaissance, it was about contrasts, warms and cools and lights and darks that compel thought. Tones were restrained, but the deep emotions and beliefs of the painters were not.

Then the Impressionists exploded upon the scene gaining spiritual radiance from colors rendered in equal brilliance. This is “The Artist’s Family” by Claude Monet.

Ah yes, the Impressionists. Who isn’t captured by their ability to capture sunlight at various times in a day on a whole array of surfaces. And how tones are altered creating patterns. Monet led the way. He experimented widely with light and color and would sometimes track the progress of the sun and the games it plays with our visual reality.

Cezanne followed with a “logically developed” color construction. He wanted to fashion Impressionism into something substantial with formal chromatic principles. He modulated a color by varying cold and warm, light and dark with dull and intense for vivid harmonies – not just faces and figures like Titian and Rembrandt but the whole picture—formally, rhythmically and chromatically. The canvas would be a continuous area modulated internally—every brushstroke contributing equally.

Then came the Neo-impressionists who separated color areas into point elements and were called “Pointillists.” Dots or specks of pure color became mingled only in the eyes of the viewer. Georges Seurat, here with “The Seine at La Grande Jatte in the Spring,” is identified as the most prominent of the movement, but…

…Paul Signac and others were very much in search for the pure, almost mathematical approach to color, here with “Opus 217.”

Johannes Itten made a distinction between the “Neo-Impressionists” who were looking to be free from restraints in color, to “Post-Impressionists” who were looking to unleash its emotional power. There are many familiar names, but none more so than Vincent Van Gogh, here with “Girl in a Wood,” composed entirely on a cold-warm theme.

When I went to the ultimate Van Gogh exhibit in Amsterdam in 1999, almost all of his work was shown sequentially, by date of completion. I could see them in the order they were painted, and how there was no smooth transition from one style to the next. I was very surprised to discover that “Starry Night” was not the culmination of his search. His next painting from that same window in the asylum at Saint Remy de Provence, appeared more as a traditional landscape.

Here’s a question: What’s the color of pure emotion? While looking through these various eras and different approaches to color, I often wonder how I should use color to depict PTSD. What color is it?

This is my “Church Creek.” I try to see the creek the way the various painters would see it, and not just the “Old Masters.” I have interviewed and profiled hundreds of living artists for 25 years. And all these fine people have emotions. Very strong emotions and ideas about color. I try to see the creek through their eyes. But I am all over the place with color and movement and form.

Will PTSD ever let me settle on one? Or are the truest secrets of color invisible to the eye and held by the heart alone?

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Johannes Itten made that central point in his 1961 book, The Art of Color. He said, “Colors are forces, radiant energies that affect us positively or negatively, whether we are aware of that or not.” So yes, Johannes, we are the children of those supernatural energies.

Nothing has compelled painters and other artists as the use of color, and there have been many strongly held theories and practices. In the Book of Kells, the Irish monks achieved spiritual radiance from different colors rendered in equal brilliance, not seen again until the Impressionists. In Renaissance art, color was usually restricted and used symbolically.

Leonardo DaVinci could employ or reject strong coloration. With the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, he applied almost imperceptible gradations in sepia tones of light and shade. It is magnificent. Magnetic. He could also let color loose with his “Last Supper,” showing his full range of power.

El Greco is often described as “strange” and frequently shocking. He wasn’t concerned with realism in form or color. In “The Purification of the Temple” his agonizing elongated figures are individually presented with sharp contrasts, with broad areas of imposing, glowing colors. He used most of the “seven color contrasts” to create an emotional sensation more telling than words could manage. His very strange assortment of writhing figures has a musical quality.

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No one used contrasts of lights and darks to dramatic effect better than Caravaggio, here with “Narcissus.” “Chiaroscuro” is widely found in the works of other painters, but usually not as dramatic and with such a clear moral message.

With Rembrandt, color becomes dense, saturated—it almost has a life of its own. Here, with the “Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” light escapes the gloom and dances on the surface.

JMW Turner opened the Romantic movement and is said to have used color as a “psychic-expressive medium.” Turner could soar in the unlimited space of the heavens that carried the light that lit up his world.

Then we get to the Impressionists, Post-impressionists, Expressionists, Cubists, abstractionists and on to “Pop” and “Op” and what not—when color, wild color, became the reason for being. But those are for a future Substack post.

We are the children, the offspring of supernatural energies. We hold the secrets of color in our hearts. We sometimes soar with Turner, sink deep into life with Rembrandt, dramatize with Caravaggio, become strange and intense with El Greco, get overwhelmed with ideas like Leonardo (but not as much) and as deeply contemplative and spiritual as the Irish monks (but not as much). Sometimes it comes at us all at once as PTSD, but we can use that passion, as they did, to create.

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You can find it in many things created by humans, especially the visual arts—paintings.

It’s easy to see in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

Then I started looking at other familiar works—famous ones like Albert Bierstadt’s, “Campfire Site Yosemite.”

But also by living artists I have written about for the past 30 years. This is “Sunset at Tilghman Island” by Jay Peterzell.

And photography. This is by Ansel Adams. Then I started going back through my own paintings.

Forty years ago, I walked down to our little residential “lake.” There was this funny little bird with long legs wading in the shallows. I did some research. It was a stilt sandpiper. I had not seen one before, anywhere. It seemed to bring a message. So did the stars and the moon…and the trees. Dancing. The universe appeared to be dancing in jubilation to a swirling rhythm.

It has been only recently that I discovered that my painting, “The Stilt and the Stars,” has the proportions of the golden ratio.

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In the last 35 years, with the Hubble Telescope, we are now on a first name basis with the millions, billions, maybe trillions of disk-like spiral galaxies that look like natural biological formations here on earth.

“The Golden Ratio” is not rigid. I see it as a universal sensitivity; the powerful blueprint of the Divine. Yet, at the same time, a comfort: a boundless connection to eternity.

I am up and down with PTSD. Like many, I can feel lost and isolated but then I look again to the heavens and see the grandeur of creation that surrounds us: from the majestic to the minute, from the mightiest to the tiniest. And I can again feel that joy, that jubilation—the dance of eternity.

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The soaring paintings of JMW Turner are more than visual representations of themes—history, mythology—or interpretations of the great works of literature. The paint moves. It carries you into a swirling, living space. You have a face-to-face encounter with eternity. You can stay in that dimension that reaches deep within the painted surface for a long time. He does.

Lynn Mehta travels to everywhere, exploring the world in color and form. There is fluidness in her work that connects the oceans to the deserts, and farmlands and to the cities—backstreets and main streets. Her paint celebrates its own reason for being. Each place retains its own identity. Its own soul. And yet, there is a recurring energy that ties all of her visions together in a universe of motion. It is TIME as well as place.

They may appear to be abstract paintings but they settle into your mind and emotions as houses, ponds, or trees. When Barbara Pliskin begins to paint, she sees pigment simply as pigment. She revels in the freedom of arranging bright spaces in contrast with dark. Gradually, forms appear and begin to tell their deep-felt stories. Barbara listens. This painting is called “Dusk.” It’s not just a time of day; it’s a sensation that has moved us emotionally through our lives.

Barbara usually captures the seven color contrasts that theorists talk about: light and dark, cold and warm, levels of saturation and others. There have to be at least seven contrasts of TIME: Deadlines being one. Others?

For Steve Fleming, the power is not in the subject; it’s in the sweep of the brush stroke—the loose placement of colors that balance a composition. It’s the bright lights that are scattered through fields of warm and cool contrasts—the suggestions of real things. His “plein air” landscapes are subdued and calming. Happy. They capture a moment that never ends. You don’t want it to.

Artists of all sorts feel this. Actors can be overcome with the glow of time returned. So can musicians. Writers certainly.

It’s not just good times. Traumas can come roaring back. My personal TIME came to a halt this month when my computer crashed. Days were lost. I was overwhelmed. PTSD can shake you apart and pull you down. I was about to give up. So, what do I do? I plead for the art time—the creative time—to hang out with me for a while.

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1. JMW Turner - Snow Storm - Steam-Boat Off a Harbour’s Mouth

2. Lynn Mehta - “Night Harbor.” http://lynnmehta.com

3. Barbara Pliskin – “Dusk.” - http://barbarapliskin.com

4. Steve Fleming – “Last Day at Rockport.” https://steveflemingartiststudio.com

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Antoni Gaudi was a joke to my architecture history professors in the early ‘60s. He was the Spanish architect from the late 1800s who was known for mixing exotic forms and materials. They dismissed him as a remnant of the Middle Ages—a time of religious fantasy: a time of gargoyles and flying buttresses.

His buildings, like the Casa Batlló, were full of fanciful shapes and hues. A professor told us they looked like they came out of a child’s coloring book. (As if there was something wrong with that!) Anything with “ornamentation” was derided as “Rococo:” the ultimate in flowery style.

The Casa Batlló’s roof top terrace is a private space and could have been simple, but instead it became a magical wonderland. As an art student, I was taken by it. I couldn’t get enough.

Gaudi was left in the dust of the “modernist” crusade that is usually credited to Louis Sullivan, a New York architect and contemporary of Gaudi. Sullivan made the statement in the late 1800s that “Form Follows Function.” It was a universally adopted credo. The modernists believe that there is no need for crazy forms and imaginative color.

Meanwhile, Gaudi was designing The Caprice, a “small but comfortable house.” The name, “Caprice,” related to music, is a fast piece that breaks with academic norms.

But “Form Follows Function” has continued to dominate architectural theory through the modernist period. It has given us “modern architecture” like the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier.

And has led to the glass boxes we are so familiar with, like this by the (adored) Walter Gropius.

Ironically, with Gaudi, function was as important as form—it was primary. It came first and allowed the structures that became fantastic. Here, chimneys and ventilation towers are transformed into sculptures. They can sometimes be a bit threatening but lifting and heroic at the same time.

Humans have three natures: Biological, Intellectual and Supernatural. The modernist movement has always been an intellectual interpretation of “Form Follows Function.”

Not Gaudi. So he had three strikes against him:

1. “Eclectic.” That was a very bad word in the ‘60s. He had too many historic influences. Gaudi was impure. “Too much going on.”

2. “His work doesn’t have boundaries.” That’s because it resides in the Supernatural realm where imagination through meaning was born and lives.

3. “His work was primarily religious.” Yes, he was constantly designing monasteries and chapels, and the man himself was intensely spiritual. But all of his work was great.

Antoni Gaudi began his masterpiece, the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in 1882. He died in 1926, 100 years ago. He knew he wouldn’t live to see it finished, so he left elaborate and exacting plans and the construction has been guided by those original designs. It is dedicated to the Holy Family—it’s all about the early life of Jesus. Every element has meaning, but the overall strength is its birth in Supernatural art. It soars not only through imagination but also intellectually.

It has warmth. It welcomes millions of people from around the world, regardless of religious faith. They come each year to Barcelona for the purpose of being touched by its glory and spirit.

The interior is glorious.

This year, February, it reached its full height. The cross—which is fifty-five feet tall and made of fluted steel—was installed on top the central pinnacle.

A few years back, Karen and I rode all the way to the top to look out, not just on Barcelona, but the whole world—the universe. There at the pinnacle of this soaring spiritual monument, PTSD and all emotional sufferings can be elevated to another realm—the Supernatural.

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I was consumed by this miracle when I saw it at the Trinity College Library in Dublin a few years ago. The conversation arose out of my immediate questions about the design, the details and the size and placement of the figures. The symbolism can be bewildering even to the scholars.

The manuscript has been extensively studied using modern technology such as Micro-Raman-Spectroscopy. Yet the Library’s official guide states, “…it is not known how some of the microscopic detail was achieved.” Yes. “Microscopic detail.” From the year 800!

This is the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is not a text book. Nothing is literal. The stories can be told in abstracted circles or other geometric shapes. Sacred personas can be seen as lions or peacocks. John is seen as an eagle. Fish, snakes, goats, doves, wolfs, cats and other symbolic creatures appear but have meanings that have to be deciphered from the lines of text.

Yet, the paintings don’t always coincide with the text. Artists will be artists. That humanness entwined with the spirits they partnered with created a timeless masterwork that is truly spiritual. And the scribes also could get a little crazy with the text once in a while—erratic. But that of course is, again, just humans being humans.

So, my conversations with the artists and scribes have continued. I hear their voices the more I try to connect as an artist and writer. The PTSD helps—it takes me to an unlimited emotional place. And of course, for the artists, time and distance doesn’t mean much when you’re dead. The individuals have never been identified by name, but they have individual personalities just the same.

They want to tell you, happily, about their faith and connections to the gospels. They saw everything through the eyes of the apostles, and their hands were guided by angels. But they also had the freedom to use their own skills and judgement to choose their ink and experiment with colors: lead oxide for red, arsenic sulfide for yellow (be careful with that one), gypsum for white…

One artist used verdigris with a high copper content to create a bright green for the cloak of Jesus. “Heavens to Gabriel,” he told me, “it glowed! It really lit up, but alas, it was unstable and mostly disappeared over time.”

There are many books and papers. The various scholars will disagree and debate. But in their academic pursuit, there doesn’t seem to be much conversation with the monks who poured their hearts, intellects and souls into this, the all-time supreme interpretation of the gospels. It was not intended to be reproduced for the masses. This was long before the printing press. It was a singular dedication of faith and tribute to God for giving them, all of us, the gift of art and original thought.

You may never get the chance to see the actual manuscript, but look, watch, the reproductions and place yourself in a room in a medieval monastery. Speak with artists and scribes and look out on the gardens and fields that harbor the creatures of Nature that are fervently included on the vellum pages of the Book of Kells.

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I was consumed by this miracle when I saw it at the Trinity College Library in Dublin a few years ago. The conversation arose out of my immediate questions about the design, the details and the size and placement of the figures. The symbolism can be bewildering even to the scholars.

The manuscript has been extensively studied using modern technology such as Micro-Raman-Spectroscopy. Yet the Library’s official guide states, “…it is not known how some of the microscopic detail was achieved.” Yes. “Microscopic detail.” From the year 800!

This is the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is not a text book. Nothing is literal. The stories can be told in abstracted circles or other geometric shapes. Sacred personas can be seen as lions or peacocks. John is seen as an eagle. Fish, snakes, goats, doves, wolfs, cats and other symbolic creatures appear but have meanings that have to be deciphered from the lines of text.

Yet, the paintings don’t always coincide with the text. Artists will be artists. That humanness entwined with the spirits they partnered with created a timeless masterwork that is truly spiritual. And the scribes also could get a little crazy with the text once in a while—erratic. But that of course is, again, just humans being humans.

So, my conversations with the artists and scribes have continued. I hear their voices the more I try to connect as an artist and writer. The PTSD helps—it takes me to an unlimited emotional place. And of course, for the artists, time and distance doesn’t mean much when you’re dead. The individuals have never been identified by name, but they have individual personalities just the same.

They want to tell you, happily, about their faith and connections to the gospels. They saw everything through the eyes of the apostles, and their hands were guided by angels. But they also had the freedom to use their own skills and judgement to choose their ink and experiment with colors: lead oxide for red, arsenic sulfide for yellow (be careful with that one), gypsum for white…

One artist used verdigris with a high copper content to create a bright green for the cloak of Jesus. “Heavens to Gabriel,” he told me, “it glowed! It really lit up, but alas, it was unstable and mostly disappeared over time.”

There are many books and papers. The various scholars will disagree and debate. But in their academic pursuit, there doesn’t seem to be much conversation with the monks who poured their hearts, intellects and souls into this, the all-time supreme interpretation of the gospels. It was not intended to be reproduced for the masses. This was long before the printing press. It was a singular dedication of faith and tribute to God for giving them, all of us, the gift of art and original thought.

You may never get the chance to see the actual manuscript, but look, watch, the reproductions and place yourself in a room in a medieval monastery. Speak with artists and scribes and look out on the gardens and fields that harbor the creatures of Nature that are fervently included on the vellum pages of the Book of Kells.

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It’s not only about appearances—he conducts the music of the place. He records the laughter in the valley and life of the mountains. He visually records the languages of all the other living inhabitants, from livestock to roosters, from beavers to bluebirds.

Andrei paints emotions—honest connections. He doesn’t include people because the people quickly become the subject and can detract from the pure power of the natural landscape. But he often includes the inventions and artifacts of mankind.

He has painted hundreds of mostly panoramic scenes in the Shenandoah Valley. It’s almost a world in itself, where nature and humans have been melding respectfully for thousands of years.

Still, his work is always about art. Painting. It’s about composition, form, color value and contrasts. But like all true art—real art—It starts with emotion, a deep connection to life

I have written about Andrei’s work over many years. It always has a calmness about it. A truth. He is touched by the spiritual power of a place. That power comes through the souls of the people who have lived there and loved the land—where they wondered and dreamed and exalted. It’s from the millions who have soared above physical boundaries and have looked out on this creation, this Earth. They are there with him to share the wonderful moments of creation.

Have you ever been aware of that force? As a painter or as a musician? Or maybe as a person who tunes into your surroundings?

I have felt that, especially in a desert canyon as the creek dances its way over the boulders and the resident lifeforms stir and go through their daily rituals. There is something—a spiritual power that has my back—that wraps around me. It’s almost a physical force.

More than ever, you and I need the rhythms, the forces that sweep us along in a continual awareness and homage to the beauty of life and land—back to the beginnings and forward into whatever awaits us now.

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1. “Spruce Saddle, Beaver Creek, Colorado

2. “Pagoda, National Arboretum, DC

3. “Little Schloss Trail View, Blue Ridge, VA

4. “Fishing Guides Home, Boca Grande, FL

5. “Big Tujunga Canyon, Angeles National Forest, CA

http://andreikushnir.com

All of this comes together in his “Black Tie” paintings. Moving figures emerge from the suggested space in a dance of mysterious energy—a timeless and tireless whirling and spinning—a Jazz composition that becomes the essence of Cool, the “In Crowd.”

It becomes, at the same time, a universal portrait of the human instinct to share an essential identity--from group personas, to a universal human collective. It’s that exclusive humanness that pulls us all together, and it is becoming more critical every day.

You see it in the electric pattern of lights and darks throughout each of his landscapes. It creates a universal whole—a coming together—something all humanity feels deep inside. Each element of the human landscape is interdependent in our ongoing struggle to survive.

It’s the same with PTSD; it’s the same emotional shock wave that anyone can experience. It’s the same struggle that should lead us all to connect with each other and reach for the supernatural…to soar above the biological and even the intellectual to that spirit world where there is a calling—a coming together.

1. “Hands On “

2. “Flame Garden”

3. “Pondside”

4. “The Choice”

https://robertfreemanart.com

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Few artists I have known have the pure passion for art as Alan Braley of Washington DC. For over 50 years he has explored and conquered so many subjects and techniques. He begins with an idea. It grows and sends out shoots and a new series is born. It can lead anywhere but it has to have a raging connection with spirits of the earth and humanity.

Famous and not-so-famous artists have said in various ways that art without passion is decoration. Paul Cezanne said, “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. Emotion is the starting point, the beginning and the end.”

The great painter, Jean Ingres, said, “Do not suppose anything good or even fairly good can be produced without the nobility of the soul.”

The struggle to create, to learn, to explore is always there. Occasionally when PTSD grabs us and the dark winds blow, the fire goes out. But something will spark, maybe a person who electrifies, or, for me, a long walk in the woods, or watching the creek behind my house, and the fire ignites. The need to make art explodes. It’s also true in music, writing, and theater. PTSD can be the tornado that lifts us to a clearer vision of what really matters.

To Ben Shahn, “Spiritual energy” was the “primary force in art.”

Real creativity comes not from just your eyes, or your hand, but from inside—the heart, the soul...and hunger. It is the hunger that matters. You have to soar above the endless fragments of reality into the intensity of invention—the realm of idealism.

I have followed the work of Barbara Nuss for many years. She paints from life not photos. She is master of technique, a teacher who has written a book on landscapes. But it’s the inner life of her work that can’t be taught—it’s the passion for making a vision come alive.

There are other passions in life. I don’t include the accumulation of money, credentials and awards. That’s obsession, not passion. It is the spiritual energy that clings to your soul, your humanness—and in the end it is the only award worth dying with.

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1. “Harbor” - Alan Braley – www.braleyart.com

2. “The Old Mill” - Paul Cezanne

3. Louis-Francois Bertin” - Jean August Dominique Ingres

4. “Liberation” - Ben Shahn

5. “The Flower Lady” - Barbara Nuss – www.barbaranuss.com

Go ahead, draw a line on paper. You can do that because you are human. It lifts us above Nature and takes us to the Supernatural—no other creature on earth can do that. Draw another line. Then another. Make a picture. Hum a tune. Make one up. Write about something you can’t see, but only feel.

We humans have been doing that since we climbed down from the trees hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was a divine gift.

I began drawing and making art as a little kid. So did you. We moved to Arizona when I was six and I fell in love with wide open spaces full of subtle and ever-changing colors.

In college I majored in art and would slip off to local canyons in the early mornings and watch, and listen, to the canyons come alive.

I received an Army commission through ROTC and kept making art. I went to Vietnam and imagined works of art everywhere—in the jungles and the swamps. When I got back, I painted some kids I saw in a village. They were outcasts and it hit me hard.

I went back to Tucson and began teaching boys with serious emotional problems in a residential treatment center. I taught the academic subjects through art. These tough guys connected and absorbed the subjects while expressing themselves in ways that they couldn’t before.

I then taught kids with learning problems on an Indian Reservation. I worked with an old Indian potter there. She left the reservation as a young woman and returned as an old woman. She re-taught herself the ancient ways of living and making pots. It let me see the world through her eyes.

I spent 25 years on Capitol Hill in DC in various ways, and painted the Capitol building in various ways. It is not so much a building as a composite of ideas and principles. It can look any way you imagine.

I have written songs, and books, and a play. I wrote a column on art and artists for a DC paper for 20 years. Now it’s Substack. I don’t want to stop. I can’t.

Looking forward: Today, that incredible intellectual and spiritual gift we were given hundreds of thousands of years ago is being handed to machines. A few humans, the high tech masters of the universe, are racing to replace us with artificial intelligence and humanoid robots.

AI can create visual images in any art style, or in the manner of any particular master. You want a congressional debate scene in the manner of Salvador Dali? You got it. You want your house and yard painted in the manner of a Van Gogh? You got it. The programs can make dead people come alive. They can clone voices. You can write a song and have it sung by Elvis, or Pavarotti.

Even now, it’s hard to tell what’s real. In 2026, will anything be real? How will we know? We can’t depend on anything digital. We must continue to make art and interact with it personally. Original art will matter more than ever. Real human art has a feel. It will touch you if you let it.

In any case, I can’t let myself stop writing, painting and being creative. Neither should you. PTSD be damned, don’t let anything stop you.

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1. Cave art.

2. “Sabino Colors” – James John Magner

3. “Children in a Village” – James John Magner

4. “Ricky Painting a Mural” – Photo by James John Magner

5. “Laura Kerman Firing Pots” - Photo by James John Magner

6. “Disappearing Trees” – James John Magner

7. “Autumnal Cannibalism” - Salvador Dali

8. “Magner” – James John Magner

Martha Pope started with watercolor. “But,” she said, “it can be unforgiving. It produces anxiety along with the picture.” So, Martha began to concentrate on pastels.

“The wonderful thing about a pastel painting,” she said, “is that you can mush up parts of it.” We talked about how you have more freedom to change your mind. You can add details or light effects. Or take them out. You can brighten colors or subdue them. “It’s about capturing the essence of a scene ‒ a statement of joy about a place and time.”

Martha uses the freedom to make changes as she goes—to reach into the soul of a landscape. She watches the light change by the second and feels nature move with the breeze and flow with the waters that spread in a marsh … or drift through a wooded field. It comes from her heart. It’s her conversation with nature.

Martha also discovered the touch—the feel of pastels and the feel of each color—and how you blend with them. Your fingers begin to glow and so does your mind. It is a connection with the real—the tangible. It’s that connection between the tangible and the appearance of reality that makes it art.

It’s also that connection that makes us who we are: It’s the beauty we exalt and the joy of soaring above the mundane. But it is also the unexpected shocks and the occasional disaster that can knock us down.

We need to get up and climb until we can touch art and creativity and beauty…and blend with the colors of life.

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https://thewednesdaystudio.net/galleries/martha-popes-gallery

1. “After Rousseau”

2. “Salt Marsh in Autumn”

3. “Sycamore Sentinels”

4. “Cissy’s View”

Patsy Fleming creates fantasies. Some paintings, like “Play,” are purely abstract, but it is a portrait of “memory, imagination and a lifetime of witness.” It may appear to be just color and line—light and dark forms—ratios and proportion…movement. But no, every life experience is in there. It’s only through human reality that can you fantasize…imagine.

In others, like “I am Safe with You,” figures and places lie anonymously in a dream state. “The feelings,” she says, “are just beyond our focus, but there is always a touch…a sense that emotions dig deep.”

Patsy Fleming says we can catch a moment or a lifetime in paint. “Elbow Cay” comes at you with force. It grabs something inside of us—something from our past, maybe. Maybe it’s something sliding away…something we want dearly to hold on to.

But it is more and more difficult to know what is real, isn’t it? Images of any kind can be created in an instant. But something is missing—human sharing? Maybe it is human fantasy that’s constantly growing inside us that can be shared but not faked.

PTSD is like that. It comes from being alive. It is real. It’s not fake, but the feelings are often beyond our focus. We can use the human fantasy that’s constantly growing inside us to reach the ultimate reality of our worth.

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You can’t just walk past “Saturn.” Alyson Weege invites you into her mind-thoughts. There is no escape. Her paintings are always about something: “a collection of memories.” Are they dreams or voices from the past? Could be. You want to know why—why do all of these very different things share the same space? What does it mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

With “Equestrian Portrait,” she brings things and people together. As she paints, some drop in to stay. Others make an appearance and then “depart”—sanded off the board. So, where is this congregation happening?” It depends. That’s her grandfather, a wonderful man, leaning against his 1956 Ford—could be the Arizona desert.

OK, one more. “Two Hundred Years.” Wonderful, isn’t it? Alyson’s styles seem to span from trompe l’oeil, to photorealism, to surrealism to traditional drawing and beyond. But to Alyson, they are collectively just “realism with options.” “Realism with a twist.” And why not? Everything is real in our minds but there is always a twist: another way to think, to see, to understand.

So, why do these very different people or things share the same canvas space? It’s the way our minds work. Memories, ideas, beliefs, sounds, melodies, notions, people, actions…they are always floating around in our heads because that’s the way reality shows itself.

When it comes at us all of a sudden, not ‘out of nowhere,’ but out of everywhere, it can be explosive. If there is danger—as if death is at the door—it can be a trauma not easily dispelled or forgotten. Even if the explosions are not literally deadly, they can be emotionally destructive if we let them. Maybe we have to sand them off the board, and go on.

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Here are three artists who have much soul.

Nancy Donnelly paints. An anthropologist, she is always reaching for ancient meaning and creating a narrative.

Nancy Donnelly also works with glass. It can be flat like this glass print—or three-dimensional. It’s a melding of the technical and the emotional. She is shaping a vision with her fingers while questioning the purposes as well as the forms that evolve through each step of the process.

Sheila Blake’s houses are painted with the precision of imagination. Insignificant matters are charged with meaning and are elevated to “strangeness.” A “state of wonderment.”

It’s the same with her pastels. Each work is a creation of color value and composition, including a whole range of traditional art elements to achieve the final appearance of reality. But it has built-in connotations as well—all sorts of meanings and inferences.

Barbara Pliskin begins to paint, seeing pigment simply as pigment. Gradually, forms appear and begin to tell their deep felt stories. Barbara listens: she’s always listening and searching for significance.

The subjects in her work may come to you slowly. What may appear to be an abstract painting may be a landscape or a group of people, like this painting, “Meeting.” Her website is down right now, but you can read more about Barbara from my column of six years ago. [Linked below.]

Without meaning in our lives, we are simply decoration—empty vessels available to those who would flip us this way or that. It took me a while to understand that PTSD is concentrated meaning. Like this original art, it’s what makes us human—it’s because we care deeply. AI will never have PTSD. It doesn’t care about anything…especially us. Like these artists, we have to keep reaching into our souls to find meaning—fighting through it, and use our traumas to reach for the consequences of being alive—both good and bad.

If you are a paid subscriber and would like to have your work displayed, and be profiled as an artist, let me know.

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“Seattle Ship Canal” – Nancy Donnelly - https://nancydonnelly.com/gallery/seattle-ship-canal

“Aleppo Street” - Nancy Donnelly - https://nancydonnelly.com/gallery-home/

“Angel” – Sheila Blake - https://sheilablake.com/landscapes

Still Life - Sheila Blake https://sheilablake.com/pastels

“Reflections” – Barbara Pliskin https://www.hillrag.com/2019/02/09/art-and-the-city-14

“Meeting” – Barbara Pliskin www.hillrag.com/2019/02/09/art-and-the-city-14

jamesjohnmagner.com

Here are three artists in gallery shows now. The artwork may rotate, but you can find more information on the gallery website, or the artist website.

Thierry Guillemin slips through time, searching, questioning…exploring. His images emit light—the light that emanates from nature. His work reaches from abstract to landscape to figurative but always has depth; it plays with reality. He has a tryptic with much personal meaning now hanging in the Studio Gallery in Washington, DC.

www.studiogallerydc.com Thierryguillemin.com

David Amaroso paints the intricacies as well as the major influences that shape culture. Latino identity is more than language or a coincidence of backgrounds; there is a palpable joy of belonging—being a member of the group. He is currently among ten Latino artists in a show titled “Identidad” in Manassas, VA. The reception is September 20, 6-8 PM. The show runs to October 4, 2025.

https://insidenovatix.com/events/identidad-artist-reception

www.amorosoart.wixsite.com.

J. Chris Morel paints mostly in the Taos, New Mexico region. He also travels the world looking. Always looking. It may be the mountains, or a stream or a church covered with snow, but it is really about movement and a restrained color composition. And something else—something that runs deep in the human soul: our primitive connection to the land. He often hangs in Santa Fe galleries, but he has also created his own galleries.

Morelart.com

PTSD can come from personal trauma, or from a larger experience of human discord. It can be an attack on your physical being, or a rejection of your essential beliefs. You can give in, or you can fight through it to look for the light you didn’t notice before. It’s not suddenly there; it was always there. You can find the light in the work of a artist who has an innate passion to be creative—to climb above the human turmoil to supernatural art.

If you are a paid subscriber and have a show coming up, let me know. Or, if you would just like to share your work, send me an image.

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There is an expression of the inner eye that has more than one translation. In this Jay Peterzell piece, it’s about more than a figure in a field—a dead Russian soldier. It is more about us than it is about history.

Maybe drawing conducts a universal connection passed along from human brain to human brain. A Ben Tolman work channels that subconscious flow of human awareness all the way to a conscious explosion of meaning and beyond.

An engraving by M. Alexander Gray is much more than visual impact. It’s more than exacting details. It comes from deep inside. It can envelop the spirit of a place and maybe time itself.

The ideas of Guy Kuhn float about and above the subject. His drawings can slip into the Twilight Zone with, or without his permission. Trauma can do that. We can let PTSD do the same if we don’t elevate our whole mental state above the physical. Above the literal.

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“Dead Russian Soldier” Jay Peterzell –- jaypeterzell.com

“Dante’s Dream” - Ben Tolman – https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/ben-tolman-the-underbelly-of-modernityhttps://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/ben-tolman-the-underbelly-of-modernity

“Lock 33 at Harper’s Ferry” - M Alexander Gray – hillcenterdc.org/artist/m-alexander-gray/

“Walk” - Guy Kuhn–https://nomagalleryfrederick.com/guy-kuhn/

jamesjohnmagner.com

For over 20 years, I had conversations with artists in the Washington DC area. I wrote their “profiles” in my column for a local paper along with images of their work. Wonderful work. So for my next Substacks I want to post the art of some of those great people, with their websites.

If you are a paid subscriber, you can send a sample or two of your work, an explanation of it, along with your website URL and I will post it.

Here’s Andrei Kushnir. Andrei is in love with the places that have so far escaped the wrath and rampage of man—places that more and more are becoming just a memory. Andrei conducts the music of the place, composing a setting that hovers just above reality.

The pure artistry of Suzanne Vigil, with her mastery of drawing and color, is by itself enough to pull you in with its sly suggestions…but the endless possibilities of meaning will keep you there, even after you turn away.

The paintings of Patrise Henkle echo a deep sense of time. There is always a color awareness of the place…and a timeless sense of purpose.

I once wrote that Alan Braley begins with an idea. It grows and sends out shoots and a series is born. His landscapes have an untamed, almost mystical exuberance. Loose. Flowing. Yet, another series may be overtly mechanical, hard edged, but it will still have a feeling of lightness.

Dana Ellyn leaps into themes like religion, politics, vegetarianism, and pandemics. She doesn’t paint safe. Her work can pop you in the nose, but it’s never mean or hostile.

These are all about a living culture. We have that almost insane compulsion to connect. It’s an impulse that saturates and then drains those of us with a vision we have to share. Some artists, dead and alive, who pull us into their soul are often emotional messes, at war with past traumas. Like us.

Those raw primal impulses spin beauty into something that makes life take off, and soar above the biological—into the spiritual.

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“Potomac River at Plummers Island” – Andrei Kushnir – andreikushnir.com

“Mother Nature’s Revenge” – Suzanne Vigil – suzannevigil.smugmug.com

“Washington Street” – Patrise Henkle – www.patrise.com

“Monhegan” - Alan Braley – braleyart.com

“Inside Joke” - Dana Ellyn – danaellyn.com

Vincent Van Gogh, was born into two worlds—revolutionary art and passionate religion. He looking for a post-impressionist style but flew beyond form to obsession that culminated in art that soars—that is no longer grounded in actuality.

Wassily Kandinsky believed that you had to steep yourself in the possibilities of the heart to help in the building of a spiritual pyramid that touches heaven.

This is a painting from my Sabino Canyon series. It is not visual replication--subject matter and style are irrelevant—it’s an expression of the spirits of the place...a place I know so well.

We have to hold on to the primal hunger to become one with the supernatural—the power that the ancients could feel if not clearly understand.

All of this art reaches beyond the appearance of mere “reality” with imagination and vision—the powers essential to creativity. It comes not simply from the mind, but from the heart, the soul. That is what makes us human: seeing beyond the apparent, the obvious.

Now, the tech giants and gurus of Artificial Intelligence are moving swiftly to expand machine intelligence beyond all boundaries even as they warn us that it will lead to the subjugation and possibly the extermination of the human race.

Our only hope, then, is imagination. AI doesn’t have one. We need creativity. We need the arts, not just to deal with our past traumas, but to hang on to our humanness.

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1. Road with Cypress – Vincent Van Gogh

2. Grey and Oval - Wassily Kandinsky

3. Sabino Canyon Fantasy - James John Magner

4. Ancient Cave Painting—Sego Canyon, Utah, USA

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