Chris Burkard is an accomplished explorer, photographer, creative director, speaker, and author. Traveling throughout the year to pursue the farthest expanses of Earth, Burkard works to capture stories that inspire humans to consider their relationship with nature, while promoting the preservation of wild places everywhere.
Layered by outdoor, travel, adventure, surf, and lifestyle subjects, Burkard is known for images that are punctuated by untamed, powerful landscapes. Through social media Chris strives to share his vision of wild places with millions of people, and to inspire them to explore for themselves.
Ray Morimura is a graduate of Tokyo Gakugei University, where he studied oil painting. Originally his works were geometric-style abstractions. But later he was inspired by Shigeru Hatsuyama and Sumio Kawakami, and began to study woodblock techniques. Unlike most other Japanese woodblock printmakers, he uses oil-based inks to create these detailed images.
His technique is to carve both 6mm thick plywood blocks and 3mm thick blocks laminated with P-tile, a flooring material. The “linocut” process permits quite complex designs, which are printed on mulberry bark kozo paper. Essentially each color requires a separate block, and separate inking. Some blocks are printed with solid colors, while others include bokashi or a gradation of color.
Of his work, Morimura says “printing demands total concentration as a single hair or dust can ruin a print. I usually clean my studio thoroughly and wait to begin the printing process until after midnight when it is quiet. With prints one can never be certain of the outcome until the final print is completed. There is always the unexpected, which makes it all the more intriguing. As with Zen and ink paintings, I hope something spiritual, in a contemporary sense, can be expressed in these landscape works.”
Nature of Mind - Alex Grey1996, seven oil paintings on wood with sculpted gold leaf frame, 78 x 68 in.
“One morning, a series of seven visions flashed into my mind. As soon as I drew one image, another replaced it until I had drawn a complex seven-stage journey of a wanderer discovering the spiritual path, having an introduction to his own true nature, embodying that truth, and reentering society.
I spent the next year painting each scene and sculpted an unusual frame to hold the paintings. As I was working on the painting, a poem related to each panel came through me. The finished altarpiece, Nature of Mind, is my homage to the artists and wisdom masters of Tibet. The Tibetan Buddhist teachings known as Dzogchen were the inspiration for these visions.
In Dzogchen texts various symbols distinguish between the conceptual dualistic “mind” and the self-liberated, non dual “nature of mind”. The thoughts of the dualistic judging mind are symbolized as clouds that arise and dissolve in the open vastness of the skylike nature of mind. The mirror is also a potent tool for illustrating this distinction. The mirror reflects all things, beautiful or horrible, and the dualistic mind gets caught up in the reflections, judging what it likes and dislikes, becoming emotionally charged about relatively inconsequential matters. The Dzogchen teachings advise us not to identify with the passing reflections but to recognize that our true nature of mind is the mirror’s infinite capacity for reflection.”
Stunning & Dark Drawings of Animals’ Skeletons Emerging From Their Skin by Paul Jackson
Toronto-based artist Paul Jackson illustrates detailed pen and pencil sketches with a macabre sensibility, which literally disintegrate the internal anatomy of animals. With careful attention and sophistication, Jackson makes sure the integrity of his work doesn’t suffer by assuring they do not resemble roadkill.
Dark and beautiful, the artist disassembles the whole body with love, taking care to leave the organs, capillaries and skin as intact as possible while the bones are lifted off cleanly. Clearly, he desires to showcase the body or head of the subject as a whole and living entity, beside the structure that holds it upright.
His ink has left an intense expression on both the skeletons and the face of the subjects, as intense as if they were to about to pounce on their prey. To simulate this animalistic ritual, Jackson draws each creature in mid-motion, making them seem even more alive than two-dimensional.
Before asylums were built, the bulk of care for the mentally ill rested squarely on the shoulders’ of the patient’s family and relatives. If they were lucky that is, many were simply homeless and were on their own. Mental institutions became more common in the 1600s and 1700s. In the 1700s, William Tuke, a Quaker businessman, began advocating for less physical restraints to be used on patients. Others soon came to support more gentle ways of caring for mentally ill patients as well. In the 19th and 20th centuries, asylum construction boomed.
