R i c h a r d J . B a i l e y

Return to Terra Magica

2012-01-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

I have wondered for sometime if I would be invited back there. Then, suddenly, just a few days ago, I found myself back in Terra Magica! This time, I had wandered into the highlands, stumbling upon some sort of cliff-side temple, filled with windows. As the details of the voyage quickly faded, I sketched what little I remembered, and here is the result.

For my first visit to this land, please click the link below:

http://richardjbailey.blogspot.com/2011/01/terra-magica.html

DC 2011

2011-11-26T17:06:00.001-08:00

The White House.

The Capitol Building.

The National Mall.

Gallery Place Metro.

Chinatown.

These and other prints available at SOCIETY6.

Us And Them.

2011-11-16T13:36:00.001-08:00

Us and Them
Live on this street.
But who knows
Who has yet to meet?

I see a key,
And a clue.

Do you?

Buy the print today HERE on Society6!

Memes are in your mind.

2011-11-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Millions of motivated memes move through the mind matter.

DC 2011

2011-10-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

This print is based on my mural for Ella's Wood Fired Pizza, down here in D.C. For this limited edition, I spent several lifetimes creating a digital composite of the most obvious landmarks. Remember your trip to our Nation's Capital and support the arts at the same time :)

Available HERE.

LUCTOR ET EMERGO: A spell cast for Courage!

2011-10-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't need a little COURAGE now and then?

Check out some of the artwork for the new cookbook HERE.

If you are able to attend the book signing next weekend in D.C. (Friday, 7 pm) please contact me to get on the LIST.

If you are planning to arrive at the party before 10, you can pick up your copy of the book at the door by RSVPing HERE.

You can pre-order the book (ships as early as next week!) NOW.

RJBailey originals for sale, now on Ebay!

2011-09-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, this original piece is now available on Ebay. Make a bid HERE.

The Pianist.

2011-09-23T15:46:00.002-07:00

Play 'er Piano.

I have become an avid fan of Schubert's works, especially as played by legendary pianist Lili Kraus. Although this is in no way meant to be a portrait or likeness of her, the scene materialized out of watching her play in concert. Unlike Lili, this figure seems weakened, distracted, and even perplexed by the performance. Is it just post-modernist malaise, as the surreal bust suggests? Or has something deeper gone wrong?

Busted.

Three competing voices ring out behind her, each one trying to out-sing the other, while the pianist grimaces, glancing at the metronome. The whole scene suggests a lack of cohesion and general disharmony, in which the pianist is alone in her painful self-awareness.

The restless audience weighs in both above her and below, seemingly on the verge of walking out, or throwing tomatoes. The pianist is vulnerable, exposed in front of the leering crowd.

Her posture is like an old, tired dog, unable to finish the race. She pants slightly in the spotlight, while the diva and the other singers wait in the wings for her eminent collapse.

Unemployment Line.

2011-09-19T05:35:00.003-07:00

Artist Tracey Clarke is My Hero

2011-09-18T05:05:00.000-07:00

Some people are born heros, possessing a fierceness that can manifest as rebellion, isolation, challenge, inspiration, and even salvation. In my life, such individuals shine instantly bright when I meet them, burning themselves into my inner retina, powerful and permanently.

So it was the day I met Tracey Clarke, when we were both showing at Artomatic DC a few years ago. (You know, when they still had Artomatic?) We made small talk for a few minutes. Then she turned to me, her pale blue eyes flashing and said "Do you get shit from Christians for being gay?" I was shocked and refreshed by her directness. "Well, yes, sometimes," I said. "That really burns me up," she said, and I could tell it really did.

I soon found myself swept into the penetrating and haunting world of her "New Mythology", oil paintings of realistically rendered animals in supernatural circumstances. Many are caught in suspended animation between two worlds: one that you thought you knew, and another one none of us have ever seen. Their eyes are patient, ancient, and celestial; the mystery surrounding them is tempered by the compassion and beauty within them, suggesting that in this world, it is the humans who have so very much to learn.

Tracey is a powerhouse of raw, beautiful talent, coupled with a devotion to her craft that creates work both grounded and boundless.

This summer she was diagnosed with brain cancer, and has been undergoing rigorous treatment, pulling through with the same strength I saw in her the first time we met. I know she has this licked, and I am looking forward to seeing her smile, and giving her a hug.

I've been asked to send along a drawing as a donation for an art drive in her benefit to help her and Craig with the escalating healthcare costs of her treatment regiment. There's a lot of amazing artists contributing, perhaps you'd like to, too. I will send along a link as I learn more about how to help.

You can see her work for yourself here. She is also keeping a daily diary of hard facts and faith in the face of such challenges. Please take a moment to look and a moment to say a few prayers on my dear friend's behalf.

9/11, 10 years later...

2011-09-09T01:02:00.001-07:00

Happy Patriot Day.

Theatre of the Mind.

2011-09-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

In the Darkened Theatre of the Mind, Memes Await the Action.

Modern Migration -- NOW ON EBAY

2011-08-24T21:36:00.002-07:00

Benefiting from years of aves’ evolutionary interaction with the bio-sphere’s own magnetic field, the memes perfect the art of flying.

Co-captains in the cockpit, and the pigeon-esque passengers packed in the air-conditioned cabin.

Elements of this kind are sneaking into larger works.. stay tuned for updates on the new mural project!

Buy prints/etc here:
http://society6.com/richardjbailey/Modern-Migration_Print

Buy the original on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/120783955429?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649#ht_500wt_1204
RJB

"Wild" Memes

2011-08-12T00:07:00.008-07:00

Isolated or similar memes are slow to change, since there is no great challenge to their survival. (See below) In other parts of the mind, however, currents are swift and the memes, like all other mind-stuff, are thrown together.

At this volocity and volume, memes don't meld. They ATTACK!

Out here in the wild of the mind, memes morph at a warp-speed. They attach and grow together instinctually, while rejecting and tearing other species apart. Although almost every kind of permutation is imaginable, memes seem to group with other memes around the same age, morphing into their own identities in "schools" or "packs".

As they grow older, memes slow down and take on mass and weight, settling into the mind in large communities. making their tendency towards inertia greater. In this way the enlarged mass of older memes can serve as hosts or even vehicles for smaller memes still finding their way. Since nothing in the mind is permanent, even these large structures eventually break apart, or die out, giving rise to new memes in the millions.

In a darker, denser part of the mind, these memes are hatching and evolving at a more languid pace.

Still, their razor-sharp, barb teeth and beaks guard their spawn until their fins morph into wings and they flap away, like locusts.

Excuse Me While I Disappear...

2011-08-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

2 of hearts.

2011-08-06T20:42:00.002-07:00

sometimes you need to be broken to fit.

This image is available in the society6.com shop as a print, iphone case, t-shirt and more.

New Mural Project

2011-08-05T06:39:00.001-07:00

I have been commissioned to do a mural for a private residence in downtown D.C. These are some of my ideas for the project, which will be done mostly on-site, completed in mid-September.

The cityscape will be based on D.C. again, but there will be more fantastical and cosmological elements, as the client is a fan of some of my darker, more thought-provoking work as well.

Time Flies.

2011-07-25T20:28:00.005-07:00

Jesus Said:

All types of tangled behavior,
the missing and the falling,
the rips and the tears--
all the ways you cut yourself off,
break your connection, or
disrupt the pattern--
can and will be mended.

Matthew 12:31
(from the original Aramaic)

This animation grew out of a drawing I did a while back called "Time Flies", shown here:

Some of the subtleties of the animation are difficult to see without the next dimension.... Sound! You'll notice the child clock makes several attempts to jump, before actually taking flight. The younger clock's face flips back and forth from its parents to its sibling, flying away. Once the older clock has flown, the father clock's chin tucks slightly to comfort mother clock, whose minute hand ticks forward, finishing the emotional story of the family.

It is interesting to note that story telling from a 2D visual standpoint is made much more complex even by these very simple movements. Guilding the eye, as it were, to unlock the story I'm trying to express, is still a process I am mastering....

Wandering Houses

2011-06-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

I had this dream a few months ago that the earth was alive with traveling houses, with the people trapped inside. The houses were tripping over their old foundations, wandering into the ocean, and getting lost, carrying away their inhabitants.

Without You

2011-06-18T16:48:00.004-07:00


Scorched earth policy.

"You leave me when I'm at my worst
Feeling as if I've been cursed
Bitter cold within"

--Dirty Vegas

Evolution of a Meme

2011-06-15T21:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.society6.com/studio/psychemy/Evolution_of_a_Meme/tshirts

seemingly innocuous thoughts
mitosis begins
fully-formed idea enters the mind
final mutation begins
seeks out others to devour

Memes in Babylon

2011-05-27T06:53:00.003-07:00

Rising beyond the biosphere,

the mystery of the mind

spawns the Memes.

Through nefarious means,

the Memes mine mazes

from the mind-stuff.

A Tower rises at the center of the strange matrix.

In the tower is the withered tree, the boudoir, and the meme regents, appointed when the exiled royals re inhabited their former mind.

Beneath the tower: the timepiece, ticking. Beaked, bug-like beasties emerge from rambling root system, agents of decline, fed on decay.

Outside, the gardens rot: once pristine, cultivated and kept, they have since spawned the sprouts of a new wilderness.

Beyond the tower: the stars gleam, thin clouds shroud the maze.

MAZE CRAZE

2011-05-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

JOAN of Arc

2011-05-04T16:59:00.001-07:00

Of Minds and Memes

2011-05-01T15:04:00.006-07:00

Every pattern or growth function in the phenomenal world is based on successive replication. We see examples of this in such things as the rings of tree trunks, ocean waves, and the richly adaptive and specific properties of all things plant, animal, or mineral.

It should come as no surprise that we find the same is true in the human world, in our language, our skin cells, and the very proteins that replicated to form our DNA code. Evidence of these natural patterns is plentiful from a physical point of view, but we are just beginning to learn how this replicating aspect of consciousness operates in terms of the human brain, and the generation and application of the things we call “ideas”.

In terms of meme theory, these “ideas” are no accidents. They are the foot soldiers in a newly emerging replicator known as the “meme”. Memes are self-driven idea clusters that move from one brain to another, “infecting” our minds with their thread. Some scientists even call them “entities”, embruing them with the power and the “will” to survive. Memes compete with each other to take hold in our brains and be actualized through us in the phenomenal world, much like organisms do this in the natural world.

We are only just discovering the existence of memes, as our technology and information sharing quickens at an exponential rate. It used to be that concepts could only spread through our species from one human to another with the spoken word. Though effective for thousands of years, memes in those early days effected very limited amounts of the population, usually dying out before they infiltrated a dozen brains, or even one hundred. Today we see the capability of the meme to spread its message very quickly through many humans, perhaps even ALL humans, within a short amount of time. This rapidity of the replication ensures the growth and survival of any given meme, and, like a physical virus, a meme's survival is sometimes to the detrement of its host.

SO-- Wait a minute. Our thoughts are competing for their OWN survival? Whose thoughts are these anyway?

We are already using meme theory when we say things like a video “went viral” on the internet, meaning it spread swiftly and almost instantaneously though the human culture as a whole. As we know about physical viruses such as the black death, humans can be left defenseless in the face of a disease, and something as microscopic as one strain of a virus or bacteria can wipe out or affect entire populations. Could the same be said of “non-physical” viruses of the mind? And more importantly, could such possibilities help to explain racism, patriotism, and even the Holocaust? We know that a large group of people having the same idea is powerful, but who is really harnessing this power?

For almost all of human history, we have credited ourselves, and our brains, or “minds” as the creators of ideas. But what if behind our cognitive systems there is a greater reality, in which unseen memes form the ideas that catch fire via our thoughts, spreading though our collective mind to ensure thier own survival? It is well known that the easiest way to get someone to adopt your way of thinking is to lead them to it in a way that convinces them that they were the one who thought of it. No idea spreads faster or with more passion than those we believe were our own creation.