Gilded Leaf In A Green Cage

Acrylic on canvas, 8″x10″

Sometimes I wonder if our well meaning Green movement has become a mental box that we put nature in so that we can think we’re actually doing something good. But in fact we’re just worshipping the idea of nature as long as it’s not too much of a hassle to actually do anything to make things better?

Do you ever wonder the same thing? Especially for us artists with our choices of supplies & mediums…

This small artwork is available for just $144.00, perfect for small or intimate spaces!

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

spyderwebbfineart.com

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis, and keep me painting:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

Advertisement

In The Heat Of The Suns

Acrylic on canvas, 8″x10″

Like anything else that’s good, too much of a good thing is not. Twice as much sun sounds good in the depths of winter, but don’t be fooled. Just ask the lush tropical forests that we now call the Sahara desert.

By the way, this painting is based on the same basic drawing as my earlier painting, “Pool Party.”  

This small artwork is available for just $144.00, perfect for small or intimate spaces!

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

spyderwebbfineart.com

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis, and keep me painting:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

Partly Cloudy @ The Lake

Acrylic on panel, 6″x6″

I never know what the difference is between partly cloudy or partly sunny. Isn’t it the same thing? Like the glass being half full or half empty? It’s the same darn glass with the same amount of water (or other beverage of your choice).

White clouds. Blue skies. A beautiful lake and green hills. Ahhhh.

This small artwork is available for just $96.00, ready to hang with attached paracord and sides attractively painted black. No framing required or desired. Perfect for small or intimate spaces!

Follow me on Instagram: webb.spyder

spyderwebbfineart.com

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis, and keep me painting:  patreon.com/spyderwebb 

The Brick Road

The Brick Road Acrylic 8”x8” on reclaimed wood.

If you live (or have visited) one of those picturesque places where they still have brick roads, you know how pretty they are. And how bumpy they are compared to a modern asphalt or concrete paved highway.

But brick and cobblestone roads are infinitely better than the dirt — and often, mud — roads that preceded them.

Things don’t have to be perfect. They just need to be a bit better. And then a bit better again. Which is how we got from taming fire aeons ago to 5G networks. Roads — brick, mud or footpaths, lead into the future.

Or maybe there’s no deeper meaning here, and it’s just a pretty country lane.

This artwork is available for $128.00, ready to hang with attached paracord and sides attractively painted black. No framing required or desired. Perfect for small or intimate spaces!

SpyderWebbFineArt.com
SpyderWebb.net
patreon.com/spyderwebb

They Come Out at Night

they-come-out-at-nightOf course they do. But like the stars, it’s more that they’re just harder to see in the daytime.

Fairies? Elementals, orbs, spirits, birds with flashlights? Well, probably not that.

Those familiar with them tell how they tend to exhibit disconcertingly intelligent, even playful, behavior too which makes them even more fascinating. Or weird, depending on how you look at it.

Which of course brings us to Shakespeare, who wrote “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Solid advice if you ask me. Which of course you didn’t, but so what?

Good ol’ Shakespeare.

This image is from my gallery, Paintings — check it out here when you get a chance: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/they-come-out-at-night-spiritpainter.html

If you’re interested in purchasing the original for your collection, drop me an email to see if it’s still available.

Night Blooms

night-blooms

So few flowers bloom at night, it’s almost an oxymoron. But some do, and they’re all the more precious because of it.

In many ways, we are now in a time of darkness in our world, perhaps entering an even darker time. There have been others, some much worse, and the cusp we are now on could actually go either way.

The flowers can’t hold back the darkness. But they can bring life and beauty to the darkness. Those who do, do a great service to us all. They remind us to hold on until the dawn.

And there is always a dawn.

This image is from my new gallery, Paintings — check it out here when you get a chance.

If you’re interested in purchasing the original for your collection, drop me an email to see if it’s still available.

As Above So Below

As Above So Below.jpg

The old saying points to our three dimensional world as being a reflection of the greater dimensionless world of spirit. That the rules of spirit are the same as the rules of our physical world.

Well, to a point. But let’s not get all carried away with all this. A reflection is not the thing itself. You can’t shake hands with yourself in the mirror. The reflection only points to a reality greater than itself.

And so we have to be very cautious when we try to apply the rules of — well, let’s call it the spirit world for now, although that word carries a lot of unfortunate hitchhikers with it — to the world we seem to inhabit.

A reflection actually can give us very accurate and very helpful information about our world. Is our hair in place, are we buttoned up straight, and more importantly, is there a car coming up in the next lane that I need to be aware of before I move over?

We’re hinting at very large questions here, way too big to cover in a short blog post. But as you look at the little (8″ x 8″) painting with its clouds that are reflected not quite perfectly, and the grasses and flowers in the foreground — now where did they come from, and what are they reflections of? — let it serve as a reminder of the relationship between the big reality and the reflected planet earth physical human animal reality that is our boots on the ground experience.

No big deal. It’s just fun to ponder big ideas. We don’t have to understand them completely or solve anything.

Yet.

This image is from my new gallery, Paintings — check it out here when you get a chance. 

Cactus Valley

Cactus Valley

Amazing things, cacti. Where a human would die for lack of water, some living things can thrive and grow to enormous sizes.

Some people flourish in one set of circumstances where others are overwhelmed and drown or wither and shrivel up in a situation that isn’t right for them. Take a beautiful saguaro and put it in a rain forest, and you’re not doing it any favors. Same for a lush tropical fern if you put it in the desert.

Thing is, the cactus, being a plant, doesn’t try to force the fern into its own comfort zone. And the fern is just as happy to let the cactus be a cactus. Kind of a nice way to veg out, if you think about it.

All depends what you’re built for, I guess.

This image is from my new gallery, Paintings — check it out here when you get a chance.

Yellow Lake

Yellow Lake

So other than the fact that the colors are interesting, why is the lake yellow anyhow?

Well for one thing, the whole darn scene is alive and following its own agenda rather than ours. You’ve got trees marching over the horizon, clouds hanging in the sky checking it all out, and the yellow lake not reflecting the blue sky like it’s supposed to. Darn uppity lake, anyhow.

So who says things have to behave in ways we’re used to? We humans tend to get awfully confused when things don’t follow a “normal” script. And sometimes they just don’t. Or won’t. So we explain those things away as hallucinations, delusions, dreams, mental illness, fabrications, anything to avoid dealing with the reality that sometimes reality doesn’t behave, well, like reality.

Kids know better, of course.

Messes with our tidy boxed up categorized and domesticated safe little worldviews, though. Unless you’re some kind of mystic or shaman or new age flake or something weird like that, which in itself is quite enough for those of us who aren’t to dismiss it anyway. Or a kid. But hey, what do kids know?

Except sometimes the sky is blue and the lake is yellow, and trees march over the horizon. And little orbs of light start floating around.

Oy.

This is one of my favorite styles to work with — it’s reminiscent of a block print, a look I really like, but it isn’t. The original is acrylic, painted with brushes with a strong graphic look. The paint is protected with a semigloss or satin protective varnish. It’s easy to gently clean with a soft cloth and water, even mild soap if necessary, just don’t scrub. I paint on paper mounted on plywood, so it’s very stable and sturdy. And it’s small (the original is 8” x 8” x 1/2”), so it’s perfect for small spaces.

This image is from my new gallery, Paintings — check it out here when you get a chance.

The Blue Farmhouse and God

Blue Farmhouse FAA

It’s actually a lot bluer when you’re standing in front of the actual thing than it is when you’re looking at the photograph. But even the actual thing as we see it before us is just a representation in our brains of what’s there, it’s not the thing itself.

A bat would have a completely different way of perceiving that farmhouse. More than likely, “blue” wouldn’t enter into it.

So what is reality exactly, that we are able to grasp it so differently? The photo is a real representation of the farmhouse, even after I’ve run it through my artistic software tweaks. It’s real enough that you could pick out the real thing after seeing the image, anyway. But a dog, say, probably wouldn’t connect the two dimensional image (which smells very different anyway) with the three dimensional house.

So. There’s something there, but we don’t know what it really is, do we? Our senses give us enough consistent information so that we can interact with our physical world, but as to what that physical world may actually be, we truly don’t have a clue.

Same with God. Let’s say the Methodist is a bat, the Buddhist a dog, the Cherokee an eagle, the atheist a fish. (A fish is probably never going to even be aware of the farmhouse. Just sayin’.) Each of these is just a way of trying to get a handle on some kind of something that’s ultimately incomprehensible, and there’s no point whatsoever in the fish arguing with the bat. Just leads to frustration.

Oh, man. All I wanted to do was take a pretty picture of a farmhouse, and I ended up in theology. See how one darn thing leads to another?

This image is from my gallery, Out Here in the Country — check it out when you get a chance because you’ll get to see the full resolution image in all its detail. Plus a little about how I go about creating these images. Just go here.