GreenSpeech Books and Art, Sustainable Ideas for the 21st Century

My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'till a more convenient season... - Mary Todd Lincoln

Featured Material

Featured Holiday Artist

.Amy Row Art.

A unique collection of art www.amyrow.com

Please feel free to follow me for updates or to keep in touch http://twitter.com/AmyRowArt

Now taking holiday orders for custom art pieces. Have a budget? No problem, please contact me for your special quote.

"Art is my truest form of expression. I am very passionate about everything I create. I started drawing as a child and have not stopped since. I am forever learning and growing as an artist. Working mostly with watercolors, I consider my style a mix of cartoon, fantasy, and surrealism. I fancy to painting women, because I am one, and can relate to every aspect of one. We are complex creatures who can be seen in many different lights. I try to capture as many as possible, while adding my own twist to each piece. Sometimes I like to paint things just to look pretty, and other times I like to paint things to make you think. I enjoy creating work that can give off many interpretations. Life is a masterpiece, paint it."

Featured Character Creator

Natasha Clark

My goal is to create awesome work no matter what the media may be. To reflect a feeling and emotion that cannot be said with words alone. My second love is writing. I have written many books and stories that have yet to be published. I can adapt to many styles, concepts for story/character design. My current work is influenced by my imagination, dreams, sci-fi, music, and old school animation from the 1920's. My company is Clarkimages, Ltd, a media brand consisting of intellectual property such as Paula Wowee™.

ClarkImages, Ltd. will provide a free qoute/consultation along with original artwork, or can work from concepts you provide. Including: Character Design & Storyboards; Logos, Flyers, Business cards; 3d Animation, Post production; Portraits, Commission work. Contact Natasha Clark, nclark@clarkimages.com.

I am currently gaining support for the Paula Wowee™ (PW) Adoption Foundation and Paula Wowee™ Book series. Our goal is to develop partnerships with nonprofits/private businesses to support foster children and the services they provide. Our mission is to bring the essence of our characters to every child.

Paula Wowee video clips are based on the imaginary character created by Eddierick Clark. All animation produced and edited by Natasha Clark. All music composed by Eddierick Clark. www.paulawowee.com

Featured Digital Artist:

Williams Shamir

Featured Artist

Ed Romano

Edward Romano was born in Mount Kisco, New York and has lived in the Merrimack Valley area of Massachusetts for many years. His intent to illustrate the world as he sees it began early. As a child he attempted to copy the comic strips he discovered in Depression-era newspapers and was particularly attracted to well-defined and uncluttered images. He began to experiment with painting in the 1980s.

Romano's work is largely figurative in an urban folk style, some of which is influenced by memories of growing up in ethnic neighborhoods in Massachusetts and New Jersey. But the majority of his themes are more universal, endeavoring to depict people in ways that challenge the prevailing cultural standards and where joy is part of the ordinary human condition.

"I want to create images of people who are more concerned with life and living than with conforming to the expectations of others. I admire men and women who have the courage to stand aside from the crowd and express their individuality."

Featured Artist

Donnie Pope

At an early age, I was inspired by the light, movement and fluidity that masters such as Michelangelo and Rubens displayed in their work. Later, I was influenced by the "slice of life" style of Norman Rockwell. I choose "slice of life" subjects to capture the magic of the moment. I choose a lot of jazz and music themes because of the freedom they allow me to have. I can go wherever the music takes me. Anything “Miles Davis” is a great creative soundtrack for me. What I really love about the creative process is the anticipation of not knowing where I’m going to end up once I start a painting.

As a young boy in my native town of Franklin, Virginia, I would daydream about sharing my art with the world. My career in art officially began in Mrs. Fenner's second grade class. Along with classmate and best friend, Ralph Vincent, we were tasked with drawing the New York City skyline. Running through numerous boxes of crayons in the process, we proceeded to draw and color every brick and window. It was an arduous task, to say the least. It took everything I had to offer creatively, but I absolutely loved it! The New York City skyline project was the talk of grade school. While I loved the attention, I realized at a young age that I would always have to outdo my previous work if I wanted to stay in the profession. Ralph went on to pursue a short career cleaning erasers. I continued drawing and painting every chance I got. I was hooked!

Hampton University was my next stop. Beginning my studies as a raw, freshman, art major, I was taught by some of the most talented and knowledgeable professors and artists of the day: Lorraine Bolton (Graphic Design), Janice Orr (Drawing) and Sister Benedict Donahue (Art History), to name a few. These professors followed me through my college studies.

Since leaving Hampton, I've been a graphic designer for various corporations in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. At present, I am a senior graphic designer with a high tech firm in Northern Virginia. In a nutshell, I love to create art, both at work and at my leisure. I hope you enjoy what you see!

Featured Artist/Psychotherapist

David J. Bookbinder

I was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1951. I started photographing in high school where, as yearbook editor, I took most of the candid and "art" pictures. After college, I moved to New York City. There, for several years, I did black-and-white street photography, took pictures of musicians for a book I wrote on American folk music, shot an occasional record album cover, and worked part-time as a photojournalist. When I left New York, I left my darkroom -- and photography -- behind.

In 2001, after a 20-year hiatus, I bought a digital camera and started shooting again. The shift from straight black and white, wet chemistry photography to shooting in color and manipulating images on a computer was literally an eye-opener. Rather than the people and buildings I had shot in my black-and-white days, I found myself shooting patterns of color and light. I learned to manipulate the images, hoping at first merely to improve them, but soon realizing that once an image file was on my hard drive, I could do anything I wanted with it.

Although I still take pictures of street life, nature, and people, my current preoccupation is with transforming photographs of flowers, stone, metal, wood, and the sky into mandala-like images. My early influences included Walker Evans and Diane Arbus. The present work is inspired by the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, the nature photographs of Andreas Feininger, and the flower images of Harold Feinstein, with whom I briefly studied.

My personal motivation in creating these images was to heal from a decade of physical and emotional trauma, the consequence of a near-fatal event in Albany, New York, in 1993. I tend to work on several mandalas at once. On each piece, I spend anywhere from a few hours to a sequence of several-hour sessions spread out over a couple of months. The experience is reminiscent of meditation.

My choice of the hexagram (the Star of David, "beloved" in Hebrew) as the organizing shape for most of these mandalas was subconscious, but I believe this choice was no accident. In many traditions, the Star of David, composed of two overlapping triangles, represents the reconciliation of opposites -- male/female, fire/water, and so on. Their combination symbolizes unity and harmony. Listening to what the mandalas were telling me led me out of a dark place and, indirectly, to my decision to become a psychotherapist.

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, believed mandalas are a pathway to the essential Self and used them in his own personal transformation. In a small way, as both psychotherapist and mandala artist, I carry on Jung's tradition. I live north of Boston, where I do psychotherapy primarily with artists and people with addictive behaviors. I display several of the flower mandalas in my treatment rooms, and from time to time they become part of discussions with clients. The combination of natural elements and digital manipulation seems both to stimulate and to relax them.

The selection on my website www.phototransformations.com/Flowers is part of a book in progress. My intent is to pair 52 images with inspirational quotations such that each image and quote pair resonates with a fundamental aspect of human experience. I invite participation from anyone who cares to contact me through my blog flowermandalas.blogspot.com.

I hope publication of these images will further the process of harnessing the power of the mandala to heal.

Featured Artist/Astrologer

Chris Flisher

I have been creating mandalas and spiritually-realized drawings for years. The inspiration for the artwork sprang initially from my love of astrology. Astrology uses circles and cycles to represent the changing universe. As the planets drift through the cosmos, as the seasons change, as the days come and go, the universe evolves and expands in a timeless swirl of circular motion: as above, so below. The very essence of the circle is at the core of our DNA, the patterns of nature, time, and space.

The drawings evolve from the subconscious and are created in a stream of consciousness involving concentration and meditation. All designs, patterns, and symbols are original and one of a kind. The swirl of color, textures, and spiritual symbolism are all part of the process. Although these are not typical mandalas, they evolve from the same spiritual center and are offered to the universe for the collective good of all.

Featured Artist/Muralist

Carlos Solis

My work reflects the distinctness of my artistic perception from those experiences, which provides with vivid colors and physical details those qualities in order to make something visually pleasing, grotesque or different to look at. Furthermore, I also try to create awareness and express an opinion about our delicate habitat, lack of knowledge about cultural and racial diversity, South America and spiritual concepts.

In my infinite world of my imagination, I try to convey and stimulate the mythical and spiritual elements of visual expression. My passion in painting started with the magnificence of elements of nature, fauna and flora, and its natural beauty that involves its selective conditions, for example: the majestic animals of the Amazon or Indians from Venezuela called Guajiros. However, I always try to expand my work to others areas of reality and with a spiritual meaning; I occasionally have the tendency to go from one extreme to another in order to explore and show my range of styles and techniques by creating the most beautiful and delicate components of life with the most complex and strange art.

Fortunately for me, I have the pleasure and the opportunity to experience the richness of many cultures in South and North America which allow me to expand my imagination even more. My experience also helps me to understand the differences and similarities of both worlds.

Carlos loved art since early age. He showed signs of an active imagination and growing creative abilities. With his love for animals and cartoon characters, Carlos always wanted to be a cartoonist and a wild life artista, but his vision expanded through the years to bring cultural perspective and an effective vision of more complex and ultra-dimensional presences to his paintings.

Carlos Solis graduated with an Associates Degree in Graphic Design. He started painting artistically in the mid-nineties as a freelancer specializing in nature, fantasy, spiritual and conceptual art. He works in a variety of illustrative media; such us, digital, oil, acrylics, gauche, mixed media and pencil. He also enjoys producing works of decorative art such as murals.

Featured Art

"In recognition of the connectedness of man and nature, created
with deep appreciation for the many artists, craftsmen, and peoples whose
art has been recycled to make this collage."

The artist has certified that the work titled "Green Man" is now in the public domain.

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