Temples Of The Painted Mind: Transitional Reality DefinedHello, as most of you...

Temples Of The Painted Mind: Transitional Reality Defined
Hello, as most of you...: Transitional Reality Defined Hello, as most of you know I write poetry, I also paint and when the very special fancy takes me, I create...

Transitional Reality Defined

Hello, as most of you know I write poetry, I also paint and when the very special fancy takes me, I create sculptures. Writing however has always been my passion. I have been called an artist, a painter and a poet...I am actually a gardener, a woodsman and a student of the world around me who just happens to express all of these things through poetry, painting and on the odd occasion, sculpture. The truth is, if I really thought about this particular subject I could honestly say that I am at least a couple of dozen things, all of which, much the same as yourselves, go to make up me.

 Once, not so long ago, a good friend of mine was talking about all of these things; what makes a person who they are, what people describe themselves as, and the fact that a lot of people when asked, "so what do you do fella/miss", they almost always reply with their job title and description, their profession. Now, if your job is your life, I'm not knocking it, or if you love your job so much it becomes an automatic answer, great, maybe it's a pleasant mixture of both, and in that case, all the better, but...what makes you, you? What happened to make you, what's broken you, was or is your breaking your making, what defines your reality, what is your own personal meaning of life?

Yes I know I said "define your reality" and yes I know it's a cliche, but think about it, everyone has their own take on the world and what happens therein, their own specific perspective that moulds their ideals, and this is what defines their own personal reality, it's not just a mildly clever cliche.

When I began writing poetry in earnest with a mind to share my words with others, I never for one minute thought I would ever go as far as publishing books filled with my poems, poems that reflect my personal reality. I have written poems, the inspiration for which are taken from my darkest hours when despair, if you can imagine this, was my only company, the flip side of which reflects the exact opposite, where the first conscious breath of the day seems like utter and complete joy bathed in the light of the rapture of existence. There are many of my views and opinions and words inspired by the views and opinions of others, about everything from religious strife or harmony, to the political storm that seems to be raging world over at the moment and how these things and all in between effect the day to day lives of us all. There are poems of love, both tragically lost and the tempest such loss caused around me and the unexpected and magically found love, with all the wonder it brought to my life. There too are many poems of my travels and the varying experience of emotion along the way both good and bad, with acts of savage wickedness and the awe inspiring random kindness and love that holds firm the fire of human dignity and fellowship and...the world of spirituality (for lack of a better word understood by many) that transcends race, religion, creed and colour.  There are poems of the many natural wonders I have been so incredibly lucky to have seen, even the small things that add up to the beauty of the day, like music, both man made and what I like to call 'nature's orchestra', visual art too in it's many exiting forms and the plethora of sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings that inspires such things.

There have been many great people who have inspired me, I have the honour to know many of them and the luck to call most of these my friends. There too have been members of my family, both past and present who have have inspired me. I wrote these books and will continue to write them throughout the transitional period of this life, I hope they in their turn will inspire and help people.
This then, is that which defines, 'my reality'...how about you?

http://amazon.com/author/d.n.read 

These are some of my latest paintings,

some have sold, some have not...never the less, enjoy!

Hello

Hello, because I am quite regularly away from this and doing all the other things I get up to which, even if you've read all of my blogs you're still only getting the small picture of how much I'm doing elsewhere and I'm not boasting or making weird excuses, that's just the way it happens to be. Anyway, this particular post is to say hello to all the people from all the countries that have so far looked at my blog, this list is not in any order and thus reflects nothing about favor or who has visited more, it's just the way I happen to have written the names of your respective countries down in my note book. I make a list so that I do not forget to say hello and thank you all, after all, courtesy costs nothing as the old saying goes, an old saying by the way because in my eye's it has always been relevant and true. So without further ado I would like to say hello and thank you to;

Ukraine

Netherlands

Great Britain
Nepal
Serbia
Malta

Macedonia
Trinidad and Tobago
South Korea
Morocco
Vietnam
Poland
Austria
Romania

Canada
Indonesia

Russia
Papua New Guinea

Greece
Japan
Kazakhstan

France

USA

Finland
Ireland
Taiwan

Ghana

China

Australia

Israel

Germany

Brazil

I happen to think there may be others that I have missed. If this is so please feel free to let me know, and if I have missed you, I will say hello and thank you now, and a special thank you for looking again (if you do) even if I did miss you out.
Some of you I have already said hello and thank you to which is probably why I have you on the list in my head instead of the one on paper and thus why you're not mentioned above, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Italy to name but a few. You are not forgotten.

Peace In All

ETIHWBLACK

I'll tell you all about this when I've been to sleep for a few hours. Peace in all...

I have painted another one, as I said, the inspiration has been coming in floods. This one is a bit odd in the fact that when I put it up for sale on ebay I was asked to choose what style my painting falls under? Well...realism was one that's close for this painting, but then so was surrealism. I shall tell you for why. I was walking in Scotland through a valley that's just like this in shape and to a certain extent colour. I have been almost haunted by dreams of this perfect valley for a good while, the vision of this valley that I painted, almost the same, so I suppose being as my dreams have become intwined with my reality in the case of this painting, and the fact that it did all seem to be, very surreal, means that it falls under both and so thus is it listed...never the less I hope you and whoever buys it enjoys the image, the painting, the really surreal I have called 'Where You Look From'.

Well I put those paintings of mine up for sale, and I've painted another, the inspiration has been coming in floods, which is nice. The writing too, I have been working (if you can call it that) on the the second in a trilogy of poetry books called 'A Quill Unchained' the first of which is entitled 'Whispering Ink Song', available on amazon in kindle and paperback formats........blah, blah, baaaaahh, I am starting to sound like one of the sheep...never good. Anyway, Yesterday I finished another painting which I have called 'Sun Peek Silhouette', I painted it from a memory of mine, when once, a few years back now I suppose, I was wandering in the mountains looking for inspiration, learning and great many other things besides, as one does. I remember it with clarity, one enormous peak and many others behind it in the distance, the sun was going down, the insects were biting and I'd not yet found a place to camp for the night, but it all meant very little, as the sun sank lower the silhouette of the mountains became almost two dimensional, very bizarre and very beautiful. Here it is, how I remember it, but when I think of what it would look like now on canvas. Kind of...you know what I mean.

Oh and when I said that I don't call it work when I write, I simply meant that more often than not people associate work with hard ship, stress, the good old comment "I hate my job", and the general consensus  that work is a drag or at least can be, and I don't because I love what I do.

I hate working inside, truth be told, I'm a gardener that writes poetry and stories from time to time, and I also paint quite a lot too. 

Self expression can set you free you know!