The Cultivation of Love in Our Lives By Truly Being Ourselves and Each Other

Hi Everyone!

I just want to say that my main focus right now is a sense of life art.  That entails personhood, character building, enhancement of the quality of the experience of living and positive social impact.  That said I have a video that I put together that is about five minutes and sums up nicely the historical thread that I have followed to get to where I am today in my art life understanding.  You can see that video on my YouTube page, here on the website under the ART tab and also on various other social media.  That five minutes puts into context what it is my work as an artist and life work as a person which are one in the same are all about.  Ironically it has a lot to do with doing absolutely nothing at all and just being but there is some crafting thrown in for good measure.  

So for the time being, I am keeping my guitar and vocal as the homepage for this website because it is true that that work is a focus of mine and one that I want to put out in front as a key focus area in the overall landscape of my site and life.  However, the newly titled ART tab has a cornucopia of explorations under that guise particularly of a conventional nature where conventional refers to the notion of procuring statements of expression with materials and sharing them somehow for engagement typified by an exhibition. 

My new conception of art (and I am not saying that I am alone on this, there are tons of people doing wellness out there and not calling it art but I believe it can be) is one where you don’t necessarily ever “show” your work to an “audience.”  You just live.  You work on allowing positive energy and experiences into your life through gratitude, humbleness and grace along with a moderate notion of co-crafting or co-creating with the Universe at large to namely enhance the quality of your experience of life.  To the point, this can be done in the name of art.  At the same time it can simply be called life.  

This is not to say that people all over the world won’t feel down sometimes, having varied emotions is natural.  Conventional art is a wonderful place to use as a sort of method space to creatively and constructively express negative emotions and feeling.  But with this sense of art as the craft of life and wellness, one should never find themselves valuing what is splashing up against the wall more than what is going on with their own personal health.  This conception of art essentially devalues the notion of a starving or tortured artist.  No one needs to be tortured.  

I am by no means a licensed psychotherapist or doctor and cannot by any means say that life art is a panacea for all the ills in the world.  Utilizing therapy though and properly administered medication is a vital key to combating mental dis-ease and illness.  We have to work to break the stigma on at least two fronts, one that says that a tortured artist starving and emotionally unbalanced is going to somehow create something that is more important than plain old wellbeing of that or any other human being’s wellbeing and that is not true.  There is way too much suicide and mental illness in the arts to turn away from this.  

But this is the fact for the world at large also.  Mental illness and suicide plague our world.  It is my belief art seen as the craft of life could be one more tool in the toolbelt in addition to continued conventional art, to combat, lessen and heal mental illness as it erupts all across the spectrum.  As a young person I used to think that being depressed was cool.  You sort of rebelled against the status quo and put a middle finger to order by neglecting the full scope and health of your body and mind in order to procure contrarian statements.  I had to live through a very terrible lesson that showed me that there is another way to life where the avant-garde and popular culture come together to form a new union of sorts where living life as art is at the forefront of artistic practice and is something that has been developing for quite some time in the history of art.  And what is more than that, this movement is about wellness and living a happy, healthy, fulfilled life where divine union through love is of the utmost importance and integrity  Granted, I am not saying that questioning authority is inherently bad, not at all..  

Now is the time I feel for art and life to come together for all people.  It is just one more tool in a toolbelt that is meant for everyone I believe to be able to utilize if they see fit and feel inspired to do so.  Again, you can call this all life, art or life art or even art life but it all remains to be the same and that is the powerfully potent revelation.  More will be unpacked by me in future videos, writings and live talks I am sure but for now rejoice I tell you in the power of art, for life itself, to heal and give us hope.  We are the art as Laura Hollick says.  We have to remember that we are the point of our lives.  Let’s truly treat ourselves and each other as the love that we truly are.  All best. Jon