paintings from quarantine- a series, a book

Kickstarter is up and going, more info soon.

 

⁣no. 6 - Wuhan (quarantine paintings, 2020)⁣ watercolor, oil, gesso on arches paper, 18x24"⁣ ⁣ dedicated for Dr. Li Wenliang (1986-2/7/2020) "I think there should be more than one voice in a healthy society, and I don't approve of using public power for excessive interference." -Dr. Li Wenliang "Now, the Democrats are politicising the coronavirus… this is their new hoax." -Donald Trump "Trump has botched the response to coronavirus pandemic...classifying deliberations makes it harder for health experts in government without security clearances to be in key meetings. This is unprecedented, unnecessary, and damages our ability to respond to the pandemic." -Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist "You, Dr. Li Wenliang, have been making false comments on the Internet, and will sign a letter of admonishment." -Police from the Wuhan Public Security Bureau, Jan 3 2020

⁣no. 6 – Wuhan
(quarantine paintings, 2020)⁣
watercolor, oil, gesso on arches paper, 18×24″⁣
⁣
dedicated for
Dr. Li Wenliang
(1986-2/7/2020)
“I think there should be more than one voice in a healthy society, and I don’t approve of using public power for excessive interference.” -Dr. Li Wenliang
“Now, the Democrats are politicising the coronavirus… this is their new hoax.” -Donald Trump
“Trump has botched the response to coronavirus pandemic…classifying deliberations makes it harder for health experts in government without security clearances to be in key meetings. This is unprecedented, unnecessary, and damages our ability to respond to the pandemic.”
-Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist
“You, Dr. Li Wenliang, have been making false comments on the Internet, and will sign a letter of admonishment.”
-Police from the Wuhan Public Security Bureau, Jan 3 2020

bedtime stories I’ve read

 

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old newspaper- a short story, ’13

Old Newspaper
By Anj Marth

The woman sat on the small porch of the yellow house, drinking a cup of steaming coffee. The whiteb tree in the yard was yellowing too, and its leaves were crisped by the autumn cold. It was very early in the morning and the sky had not yet cleared, over the low hills, but was hanging low and heavy in an oily fog to the trees there, hiding their flame from view.

.

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The Horrors is here, get your creatures!

 

The horrors-cover lo-res rgb AVAILABLE HERE.
The Horrors is an adult coloring book, featuring 61 pieces of original line art representing monsters, cryptids, and ghosts from around the world. For each of the nightmares, there is a page explaining their origin and history.(here are two pages as a sample, you can print these to color for free!)

 Since some of the illustrations include guts, gore, and possibly (monstrous) nudity, this coloring book is not suitable for children, only for adults.

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volume four of the geometry and mandala coloring books!

Untitled-1here you go, overachievers!
https://www.createspace.com/5801381

volume four! feel free to share this with anyone you think might need a new coloring book.

here are three bigsized pages for you to print out and color. feel free to share this with anyone you know who needs some new coloring books to run with.

15 copy 9 copy 19 copy

print edition of poetry book!

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The print edition of my poetry book is now available!

For those of you who prefer actual ink on paper.

The book of essays goes to print tomorrow, there’ll be a kindle edition of that one as well. Pick one up! Or get both, that’d be awesome too. Or share the link with people who like poetry, the kooky bastards.

I’m pretty excited about all this. I’d never have done it without prodding, but now that it’s done and published I feel good about it. I’ll post links to the second book tomorrow once it goes live, and probably put a few new paintings up later tonight too (I have one or two things almost finished) 

UPDATE: Print and kindle editions of the essay/art/tattoo book are here!

The third book in the series will be mostly images: that one won’t be out til nearer the end of the month. And I am planning a kickstarter this month, for the horror coloring book, I’ll update when both of those projects begin!

Originally Published on: Oct 4, 2013

I am crazy wild this minute- excerpt from essay on the experience of mental illness, by Lara Jefferson, 1948

This, and the previous excerpt I posted, are small selections from the book “The Inner World of Mental Illness”, published by Harper & Row in 1964. It’s one of my favorite books, written by a variety of people in very different circumstances and with very different afflictions; all the stories have the same undertone of fear, grieving, and pragmatism.

I’ve read this book to shreds, literally.

Most of the chapters in it are excerpts from longer books written by the mentally ill, but some are merely short pieces, collected by doctors or nurses. I’ll post more of these if enough of you want more of them.

The book includes a variety of mental illnesses, so if you’d like an excerpt dealing with some other disorder, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best.

This excerpt is from “I am crazy wild this minute”, written by Lara Jefferson in the 40s. It was written on scrap paper and wrapping paper in a state hospital.

When her writing was discovered by staff, she was given a typewriter and encouraged to continue. Hospitals at that time were much more chaotic, and psychosis was not treated with as much compassion or medical understanding as it is today.

Had I been born in the age and time when the world dealt in a straightforward manner with misfits as could not meet the requirements of living, I would not have been much of a problem to my contemporaries. They would have said that I was “Possessed of the Devil” and promptly stoned me to death- or else disposed of me in some other equally effective manner.
…
I know I cannot think straight- but the conclusions I arrive at are very convincing to me and I still think the whole system is a regular Hades itself. …

I cannot conduct myself as the rules set forth because something has broken loose within me and I am insane- and differ from these others to the extent that I still have sense enough to know it; which is a mark of spectacular intelligence- so they tell me.

Here I sit- mad as the hatter- with nothing to do but either become madder and madder- or else recover enough of my sanity to be allowed to go back to the life which drove me mad.

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three poems.

I’ve got a book coming out this week. The chapbooks are already sold out (I’m keeping a few for later) but it’ll be on kindle as well (very cheaply, because it’s poetry, and who needs poetry.) There’s about a hundred poems in it and the chapbook/for real version has illustrations (but the kindle does not). Several other of my poems are here online, if you like that kind of thing.

 

Here are three poems from that book.

shovels in the sun

outside the little taco stand at 13th street and juniper I met

this bum, this grifter

lying on his side by the beer vomit, he was fooling around with the drawstring on his

grey, thin sweatpants

I sat there waiting. They didn’t have a waiting area, no tables inside. no Loitering.

“I went to the sun.” he told me. “there is a lake there, but it ain’t a regular lake. it’s fire, all fire.”

I smoked. He kept on at me, “Once, I went there. You can’t stay long. It’s hot you know. all the fire. all fire…”

His face creased. His hands started rolling imaginary coils of paper, clacking dirty nails together.

My taco order came up. So I got the bag and sat back down. I had nowhere to be.

“if you get to go to the sun, watch out. they’ll try to trick you. I had to escape, they’re assholes there.

I want to warn you, but they’re listening, right now.”

He pointed at the sky.

“well, what can they do from there?” I had to know. “shoot fire at us?”

“they’ll come and get me, take me back there. I said too much already. shit.”

He stopped. His hands sat now still on the concrete next to the vomit and some bird shit.

“have a taco.” I handed him one.

he nodded but didn’t look at me again.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

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kafka

When I die, please pile all of my creative work high on the pyre.

Burn it all down.

Please don’t go through it all, re-edit and assemble it for sale,

and then make a million dollars from my sad,

overworked corpse.

Kafka was firmly of the opinion that if they don’t want it now,

while it can do me some good to sell it,

they can’t have it later,

the bastards.

He worked full-time, NOT as a writer, throughout his life. He would come home tired from long workdays and stay up all night writing.

I’d have been pissed too. They always blame his lack of confidence in his own work- but I think, deep down, it was his fury that he had had to work so goddamn hard all the time while lesser authors had the leisure and funds to write, and to enjoy their lives.

Every time you think “I wish he had written more” ask yourself- when is the last time you PAID A CREATIVE PERSON for something, and spread the word, so they’d have time to write or paint more? People didn’t pay HIM either, so there’s your answer. He never had time, because he had to pay the rent. That’s how most creative people tend to live- I am lucky because my day job is art too, but even so, it’s not free, it’s not MY WORK wholly. Even so.

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