MOONLIGHT SURF

The ocean and the waves are as much a part of who I am as the blood that flows through my veins. I've surfed the waves and sailed with the swells and have spent countless hours walking beaches from Hawaii to the Carribean, from the Gulf states to the wild shorelines of Northern California. It always renews me and fills me with appreciation for being born on this planet, in this time, in this body.

MOONLIGHT SURF ONE by Barry Howard

Walking beaches at night is a whole other world. The crashing of the waves seems both quieter and louder at the same time...as though the sound is amplified by the silence of the night, but quickly sucked up into the depth of the darkness and vastness of the firmament. The Moon and stars provide the only light, but seem more luminous in the stillness. I have just completed these three small paintings as an offering of gratitude to Our Mother Ocean.

 

MOONLIGHT SURF two

These paintings are 8"x10" oil on canvas. The edges are painted and they have a hanger on the back so they can be framed or are ready to hang as they are. I have signed them on the back. I am offering them for sale for $60 each or all three for $150. Please message me if you are interested at: barryhowardstudio@yahoo.com

Thank you for following my work.

MOONLIGHT SURF THREE by Barry Howard

 

 

 

 

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PAINTING THAT ELUSIVE SOMETHING...

I seem to have become obsessed with painting Big Sur...it's been this way for years. I find that even when I'm living somewhere else i am drawn back into painting it from memory. I finally decided the only thing to do was to just settle in here in this place that won't let me go, and fully immerse myself in it. Big Sur is a very long stretch of winding highway perched high above the ocean, and every turn in the road reveals another spectacular vista. It would be easy to just hold my hands out in those little "crop marks" that artists do to frame the composition and then take out my french easel and paint it...and that's what I've done many times...but it hasn't satisfied me.

The view, as magnificent as it is, is only part of the story...only one aspect of the thing that keeps me pretty much mesmerized by the place....and I realized that I don't just want to paint the vista before my eyes....I want to somehow capture the feelings that I get from being here. You can see it in the faces of the tourists who come through for the first time. It's more than just, "Oh what a beautiful view!"....they become transfixed...it's almost a religious experience. Partly it's the scale of the place...it seems that you can see the curvature of the Earth from these cliffs. The ocean seems bigger than anywhere I've ever been and one could spend the day just watching the light show as the sun reflects off the water, lighting up the mist around the base of the cliffs as it climbs and receeds and flows over the hills like a sentient being. It's a very big place, and standing on the edge of the cliffs, looking down at the turquoise and lapis-blue water can give you a feeling of vertigo. It's these feelings that I want to be able to express with paint on canvas. It's more than just painting a picture...it's finding my way into the ebb and flow of all the elements around me. It's an elusive quest and each little success keeps me hungry for more. At times, when I find that flow and it's working, I feel like I'm literally soaring....it's an ecstatic state and it is the thing that keeps me working to improve my skills so that I can share these experiences ever more clearly and powerfully.

RHAPSODY 24"x24" oil on canvas, $1200

 

 

 

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OR MAYBE THEY'RE JUST SOAP BUBBLES....

 

SERENITY oil on canvas by Barry Howard SOLD

For many years, these bubble-like spheres have shown up in some of my paintings and people often ask what they represent....I try to have an answer because I want to be helpful but in reality I wish they wouldn't ask. To me, one of the best things about art is that it means different things to different people. Each person brings their own perception to it and gives it a meaning that is personal to them. At times I have painted, say, a landscape of the town of Mendocino, for example, and someone will see it and say, " oh look, that looks just like that place we went to in Cape Cod..." or wherever, and they buy it because it represents something meaningful to them....doesn't matter that it wasn't Cape Cod that I painted...and if I insist that it isn't Cape Cod it simply steals the significance of the image from them. So I would rather just leave the meaning of those bubble-like spheres open to interpretation.

Having said that though, they do have a significance to me. They represent other worlds that exist within this world...because there are such worlds going on...we just don't know it because we don't have the receptors to percieve them. We tend to think of reality as a very definite, fixed thing....it's not. We humans only come equipped with a limited abiltity to recieve information. Take, for example, the electro-magnetic spectrum...we only detect, with our limited senses, a small range known as the visible light spectrum, when in reality there is infrared, ultra-violet, micro-waves, all kinds of stuff going on but we don't know it, because we can't see it....so to us, it's not part of our reality. Other creatures have different receptors...butterflies and hummingbirds see a whole world of color that we don't....dogs hear sounds that we can't hear and dolphins and whales percieve sonar and can pick up on the blood flowing through our bodies. Reality looks much different to them....IS much different to them. Our own reality is only a partial picture constructed from limited and incomplete information....like putting together a jig-saw puzzle with half the pieces missing...you still get a picture, just not an accurate one. All you get is a partial representation of reality. But we humans are very insistent that reality is what we can see and hear. We say, "Seeing is believing..." we tell people to "face reality." All of our senses tell us that this boulder we are sitting on is solid and unmoving, when actually we know it is in constant motion and is made up of mostly empty space. It looks the way it does because of where we are sitting...our point of view...if we could pull back far enough to look at our own galaxy it would look solid and unmoving too. We would be completely unaware of all the stars burning and exploding, planets zooming around them, people sitting down to tea on those planets as they zoom around, and discussing things like our limited abiltiy to percieve reality. From our hypothetical distant vantage point we would swear that we were looking at a fixed, lifeless solid lump of rock. From our distant vantage point we wouldn't exist. The farther away we get from things the more they slow down and appear fixed in time and space. If you have ever looked down at a line of breaking waves from the window of an airplane you will notice that they don't seem to be moving. Like telephone poles whizzing by the window of your car ten feet away...put those telephone poles a mile away and they seem to move by very slowly. It's all a matter of perspective. Perspective changes both time and space. Reality conforms to our perspective. Reality is very fluid and malleable. Reality is what we believe it is...and we're mostly wrong. So those bubble-like spheres help remind me not to take my own interpretation of reality too seriously.

 

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THE MOONSTONE

Thanksgiving Day

I followed the winding dirt path that wound it's way down the steep cliff face to the ocean. Many of the paths along these ridges of land are precarious....a misstep can lead to a quick trip to the bottom. The sun had spilled over the ridges hours earlier, warming the rocks, transmuting the cold of the night that was stored in them, into the warmth of the day. I finally reached the beach, removed my shoes, left them by a large boulder and began to walk the empty strand. It wasn't a sandy beach, but one made up of small grey pebbles warmed now by the sun and smoothed round by endless cycles of wind and waves.

As I walked i relished the feel of my bare feet sinking into them. The pebbles felt like some exotic accupressure treatment to my soles. I walked on, and the crashing waves washing up on the beach provided a musical score to my footsteps. White water running up the steep beach, grabbing hold of the small grey pebbles in its fingers and tumbling them back down, continuing the process of smoothing, sorting, refining the stones, turning them slowly into sand. The uniform greyness of the pebbles was somehow comforting in it's sameness...like a subdued backdrop for whatever anyone would like to add to it.
Up ahead something caught my eye. A bright flash of light in the field of grey. A piece of glass maybe? As I approached the small object it seemed to dance as it caught the sunlight. Bursts of light in reds and blues and yellows sparkled and drew me in. I leaned down and picked up the object...seeing that it wasn't a piece of glass at all, but a perfect, beautiful Moonstone lying there among these ordinary pebbles. I held it in my hand, feeling the smooth velvety surface and marveling at its clarity. The small round stone seemed to hold within it an entire world of light and color and beauty. It was a beauty that was never static but always changing and moving. As I turned it in the sunlight, different facets that I hadn't seen before would become illuminated, capturing my attention. It was much like watching the waves break on the beach, or the flames of a fire...I felt as though I could gaze at it forever and never see the exact same thing twice. There was always something new there, always another perspective that I hadn't noticed before. I had truly never seen anything like it. It was exquisitely beautiful. I looked back down at the beach to see if there were any more like it...there must be, I thought....so I walked along, scouring the entire landscape of small grey stones looking for another....I never found one. This one Moonstone was entirely unique...a gift in it's singularity. I thought about taking it home, putting it on the windowsill where it would catch the morning sunlight...but somehow it didn't seem right. It belonged here in the open, warmed by the sun and washed in the sea...and left so that some other fortunate wanderer might discover this jewel and delight in its magic.

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PAINTING BIG SUR....

I have obviously taken a long break from writing...I have needed time to shift gears into a new lifestyle after selling the micro-gypsy caravan. It has a wonderful new home with two delighful people who love her. She has been spruced up and redecorated to be even more gypsy-like, and is a happy caravan. I cherished every moment I lived in her, knowing it wasn't forever and appreciating it all the more. She is in very good hands.

The redecorated micro-gypsy caravan

In the time since then there have been many changes and events in my life. I've spent most of the time on a beautiful piece of property in Big Sur. I met a wonderful new friend, Annie Mahoney, who passed away shortly after we met. My friend Rose and I took her to the emergency room late one night. She never came back. Annie was one of the most delightful people I have ever met. I knew, from the first day that I had made a friend for life. Her passing was completely unexpected an knocked the wind out of all of us here who loved her.

My studio on the cliffs

Plans for my own life have changed since I've been here. I've wanted nothing so much as to paint the dramatic scenes that are Big Sur...the place that has been more home to me than anywhere. So I have decided to settle in here in this place that keeps pulling me back. I bought a small van, outfitted it for camping and painting and have just gotten my easel and oil paints out again. Through Thanksgiving and Christmas there have been some of the most perfect days here on the cliffs that I've ever seen. Painting here has been pure bliss.

I'm very excited about this next chapter of life. I'm looking forward to seeing what transpires on my easel and also to living in this awesome landscape that lies along coast route one....and I'm happy to get back to writing about the things that inspire me. I hope, dear reader, that you will continue to follow along as I explore with my paintbox, this unique landscape.

New Morning 12x24 oil on canvas

Thank you for being here.

 

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FOR SALE!!! MICRO-GYPSY CARAVAN AND BICYCLE

As I mentioned in a previous post, my time in the Gypsy Caravan is coming to a close. It's been over a year that l have been living, working and traveling in this tiny nomadic home. I have dearly loved it and will remember these times with great fondness. Now, I have made the decision to sell the caravan to finance my next chapter, my move to Bisbee. So, anyone interested please read the ad, or pass it along to anyone you think may be interested.

FOR SALE ! HAND CRAFTED MICRO GYPSY CARAVAN AND BICYCLE

A tiny home, studio, or craft kiosk that can be pulled by a bicycle, this beautiful little vardo was designed and built by artist/craftsman Barry Howard. It is the culmination of a lifetime of experience designing and building little nomadic homes. It is easy to tow behind a bicycle and very stable. It features a bed that is approximately 26" wide by 5' 10" long. The mat folds in sections and below is a storage area that is 22" wide by the length of the caravan and 10 inches high. The storage beneath the bed keeps the center of gravity low providing stability. The small windows in the roof provide light and a sense of space above. Aft is a galley area with a propane stove. There is a small removable table which can be used for meals or computer work. It also attaches outside at the rear of the caravan to make a work surface for craftwork or for an easel for painting. A folding stool hangs on the front as seating for the outdoor work area. The caravan features an awning that rolls up when not in use. It provides shade and directs rain away from the caravan. Also included is a large shade umbrella which attaches to the caravan, for the outdoor work area. Other features include:

CANDLE LANTERN

LED LIGHTS INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR

HAND-PRESSURIZED PORTABLE SHOWER

STORAGE NET

RETRACTABLE STABILIZER LEGS

STAINED GLASS WINDOW

FABRIC WALL COVERING

NEW PAINT, TOP OF THE LINE SIGN-PAINTERS ENAMEL

20" WHEELS

QUICK RELEASE HITCH

COPPER PIPE ROOF RACK

ROLL DOWN SHADES

LIGHTWEIGHT WOOD CONSTRUCTION

REINFORCED ALUMINUM TUBING FOR THE CHASSIS FRAME

DESIGNED TO FOLD DOWN TO BED-LEVEL IF DESIRED

VINTAGE COCA-COLA BOTTLE OPENER

 

COMES WITH:

ONE SIX PACK OF PACIFICO BEER

TWO SHOT GLASSES

ONE BOTTLE OF EL JIMADOR 100% AGAVE REPOSADO TEQUILA

ONE BAG OF FRESH LIMES

ONE SHAKER OF SALT

ONE LIGHTWEIGHT TRAVEL HAMMOCK WITH STUFF BAG

INCLUDES : 26" VINTAGE GARY FISHER 21 SPEED MOUNTAIN BIKE WITH HYPER LOW GEAR, NEW REAR CLUSTER, CABLES, AND CHAIN. OLD, SIMPLE, SOLID BIKE. POWDER-COATED CROMOLY STEEL

TWO CABLE LOCKS

TIRE PUMP

 

WATER BOTTLE AND CAGE

 

MIRROR

 

LED HEADLIGHT & TAIL LIGHT

CENTER STAND

TOOL KIT: SCREW DRIVERS, WRENCHES, SOCKET AND RATCHET, PLIERS, ADJUSTABLE WRENCH, TIRE PATCH KIT, CHAIN LUBE

 

The price for this little human-powered home-studio is $5000. If interested please contact Barry at 530-355-1319 or barryhowardstudio@yahoo.com

 

 

OUTDOOR PAINTING STUDIO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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LIFE ON THE FRINGES

I have lived most of my adult life as a fringe dweller. I wasn't really aquainted with the term or really aware that that was what I was doing until I was well into my 30's. I knew the life I was living was different than most, but my awareness of the fact that I was living on the fringes of society was something that came along gradually. At some point, I embraced it. I realized that I was most happy there. There are many reasons for choosing to live this way. In one way, it's a tool for dealing with a world that doesn't make much sense.

SOLITUDE by Barry Howard

When I think about Human kind, the Crown of Creation, and the potential world that could have been created, and compare that with the real world that we live in...with buildings that sit empty while people live on the street...food that gets thrown away as people go hungry...more people on the planet than it can comfortably support while people live their lives in loneliness...unimaginable technological abilities that get turned toward destroying one another and our own environment as well...then living on the fringe is a way to move through life with a sense of perspective. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. Some can dive in up to their elbows and get involved in trying to fix things, unravel the madness, make it all make sense, but when I've dipped my toes into being an activist I find that it tends to make me an angry person. Whatever strength of character one needs to try to bring about change, I don't seem to have it. The best I can do is to use my energy to try to bring some beauty into the world. To spotlight the part of the world that is good and clean and inspiring. It's all I can do and still maintain my own inner peace and happiness. So I paint my paintings and build my little Nomadic dwellings and feel grateful that these things seem to make people smile.

 

As I look back, I lived on the fringe even as a kid. I always felt like I was watching things from the edges, not really as a participant. It's how I made it through school too. In a way, I feel like I am indeed, only a visitor on this planet. It's an interesting planet, but the inhabitants are batshit crazy for the most part. Especially the ones who seem to be in charge. Living on the fringe seems very compatible to being somewhat of a loner as well. I do like people. I like them quite a lot....but in limited doses. I spend about 90 percent of my time alone. I am not suggesting that this is necessarily good. I really kind of envy people who are outgoing and gregarious, who have tons of friends. But time alone is somehow necessary for me to feel I am in balance. When I am with people, I usually enjoy it, but it's a very outward experience. I have designed a life where most of it is lived from a very inner experience. When I am just with myself, not involved in conversation, there is a natural process that goes on in my head. I am more aware of my thoughts and I spend more time looking at the life I am living and thinking about where I want to go from here. I spend a lot of time thinking about art and how I want to evolve my work. I spend a lot of time thinking about my micro-dwellings and doing a sort of ongoing design process that I keep filed away in my head. Living so much in my head has strengthened certain parts of my brain, especially the part that thinks visually. Lots of people have asked me if they could get plans for my micro gypsy caravan and I have to tell them that , alas, there are no plans. I visualized the caravan in my head, then visualized each design detail in my head as I went along. I've always built this way. It's harder for me to draw plans first. In a few instances I've had to, in order to show them to a client, but it's something I would just as soon skip.

There are whole libraries of places in my head with drawings and plans and expanded detail drawings and they are always there, waiting for me when I need them. I don't know how many other people work this way, but I assume most people don't. People often seemed surprised when I say I don't draw any plans for my work and I think maybe I don't need to because I have spent so much of my time alone with my thoughts. I have a studio in my head...it's a very comfortable and interesting place to hang out. It's a place where I can work on my projects, examine my life, and explore things that intrigue me. When I go out and spend time with friends, (which is pretty rare,) as much as I might enjoy the interaction, there is always a part of me that is impatient to get back to my quiet inner sanctum.

 

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