{"id":8398,"date":"2019-05-19T13:51:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T20:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=8398"},"modified":"2019-05-20T11:37:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T18:37:24","slug":"paint-publish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/19\/paint-publish\/","title":{"rendered":"Painting & Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been busy with various things the last few months. I ran a Kickstarter campaign for Million Mile Road Trip<\/em>, did some promo for the Night Shade edition, gave a talk at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami Beach, wrote a story, and did a couple of paintings. Let’s start with the latest painting.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMexico” oil on canvas, May, 2019, 40\u201d\u009d x 30\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This Mexico <\/em>painting could more accurately be called Guanajuato<\/em>. As I’ve mentioned, Sylvia and I went there in March, and were blown away by the small mountain town’s beauty. My most recent blog post has photos<\/a>, and there’s another post, too.<\/p>\n

I collaged together some of my mental and photo images for the composition, also some fantasias. To start with, I did the one-point perspective thing, picking a vanishing point and drawing lines. I have a rushed tendency to think I don’t need to do perspective lines, but the result is better if I do. Perspective is oddly counterintuitive, but it works.<\/p>\n

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The colors are all-out, as they are in Guanajuato. In the yellow wall on the left, I wanted to put scenes in the windows. At one point I had the tall guy holding a knife, but that grabbed the eye to hard, and was too harsh. I ended up with a skull, a pi\u00c3\u00b1ata, the old couple, and the Virgin of Guadalupe, who was in fact an occasional graffito on the walls of Guanajuato. On the street: a dog, a guy carrying a bread basket and an alluring woman. In the window on the pink wall, two white-haired tourists from the north—that’s me and Sylvia.<\/p>\n

How to the characters all fit together? What’s the story? I don’t know. As I always say, I like the stories in my paintings to be obscure. Like illustrations of forgotten proverbs or unknown folk tales.<\/p>\n

As always, you can get more info on my Paintings <\/a>page.<\/p>\n

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And, speaking of stories about Guanajuato, I just read Lewis Shiner’s excellent, page-turning novel Outside the Gates of Eden<\/em><\/a>, and it has a bunch of scenes in Guanajuato. That’s a picture of me in the Mission, vaping and reading Shiner’s ebook on my smart phone. Well, okay, that’s not me, but I did carry my Kindle around a lot while whizzing through the intricate narrative. Couldn’t stop. For some reason it reminded me of James Baldwin’s Another Country<\/em>, I guess because of the tangled cast of characters, and the sense of reportage. But this time, the reportage was on an era that I myself lived. Witty and worldly wise, a massive read with epic sweep, a secret history of our times.<\/p>\n

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I also found myself looking up various bands that Lew mentioned on my music service…got into Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen the other day, for instance. Such a great band. Ah, Texas.<\/p>\n

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Hopping back to the theme of visual perspective kicks, here’s a cool drawing that Bruce Sterling found online. It combines two things: a Maurits Escher-style impossible figure, and a Waclaw Sierpinski fractal gasket.<\/p>\n

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Sylvia and I drove down to Big Sur on a recent sunny day. Big Sur never disappoints. We found this great, level path leading from Rt. 1 out to a promontory, which ended in a clutter of sheer cliffs, outcrops, and blue, blue water. This rock here looks kind of like a tomahawk. Marvelous how nature crafts such things. What’s the point? God is inside everything, like the light in a stained glass window.<\/p>\n

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Our path tunneled through a grove of Monterey pines and emerged into the sun.<\/p>\n

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I got some nice clip-on shades online. I love amber shades. As good as being high. Much cheaper than buying new prescription sunglasses. My vision gets worse all the time. Eventually I’ll *ugh* have to get my eye\u2019s natural lenses replaced by plastic lenses. Not yet. Relax and enjoy Big Sur.<\/p>\n

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An awesome dick-like (can I say that?), century plant flower on a hill near our house. Bloom, my friend, spread your seed!<\/p>\n

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I’m really happy with the finished Night Shade editions of Million Mile Road Trip<\/em>. And the book’s getting good early reviews. More info on my page for the book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I published a companion volume Notes for Million Mile Road Trip<\/em> as well. Why? It’s not like I’ll sell many of them. Well, as I said, somewhat jokingly, in an interview by Jeff Somers on the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog<\/a>,<\/p>\n

“Long-term, the Notes<\/em> will be fodder for the locust swarm of devoted Rucker scholars who are due to emerge any time now from their curiously long gestation in the soil.”<\/p>\n

Curiously long, indeed!<\/p>\n