watercolor on paper, 23 x 22 inches, 2017
This was inspired by an old busker I saw in the subway in Boston.
Blog
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Entertainers Beyond the Sea
This mural has many unusual characters from the world of the arts. Artists often live lives a bit out of the box. Some of the people here are archetypal, some drawn from people in my life, but with my crowd I tried to tell a story of life, joy, music, sadness and hope. People who have had pain and difficulty at times can see beyond the day to day to things of deeper significance.
My fiddler looks directly at us challenging us to see more. The woman with the cigar box guitar looks off into her own collection of thoughts. The mime, a friend of old, has a half painted face, hiding part of his identity, as well as holds a full mask he has removed. The man holding the woman supports her with the care he gives the bird as well. The pregnant woman is bringing a life into the world, juggling the spheres of energy, keeping it all going.
There is caring here, and friendship and pain, but they are one troupe together.
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Phoenix Rising
As the phoenix emerges from the ashes, so can man after devastation and loss.
Artists Chris Cart and Jen Greta Cart painted this incredible Phoenix Rising mural for the Travis Mills Foundation that depicts prosthetic wings, symbolizing a new beginning for our recalibrated veterans.
Created in the summer and fall of 2021, this 10 x 10 foot mural is a permanent addition to the grounds of the Travis Mills Foundation Retreat in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine.
Chris has been painting murals for over a decade. The large murals can be seen across Maine from the Capital Judicial Center in State capital to locations in Bath, Brunswick and Hallowell. He has two large murals in the greater Washington D.C. area and another across the country in the other Washington, in Seattle.
Jen Greta has worked with Chris on most of his murals. For her own paintings she usually works smaller, which can be seen at: JenGretaCart.com. Jumping into the mural realm in her own right, she is currently designing and painting a 1400 square foot mural, Many Stitches Hold up the Sky, for the City of Brunswick, Maine and Chris is bringing his mural expertise as her assistant for this project.
The Travis Mills Foundation Veterans Retreat is located on the former Elizabeth Arden Estate in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine. Travis and his wife Kelsey purchased the property in 2015 to create a retreat for our recalibrated veterans and their families. Today the facilities offers a wide range of activities on the grounds, from hiking, canoeing and golfing, ice fishing and snowshoeing, cooking and massage therapy to an extensive ropes course.
Though they may be battered, they are not broken.
Travis Mills Foundation Mission
The Travis Mills Foundation supports recalibrated veterans and their families through various programs that help these heroic men and women overcome physical and emotional obstacles, strengthen their families, and provide well-deserved rest and relaxation.We support these veterans through our nationally recognized retreat located in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine. Veteran families who have been injured in active duty or as a result of their service to our nation receive an all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid, barrier-free experience in Maine where they participate in adaptive activities, bond with other veteran families, and enjoy much-needed rest and relaxation in Maine’s outdoors.
From the TMF website.
Posing for this permanent addition to Travis Mills Foundation is Taylor Morris, who, along with our founder, SSG Travis Mills, is one of five quadruple amputees to survive their injuries in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
recalibrated veteran
re·cal·i·brate /ˌrēˈkalibrāt/
calibrate (something) again or differently.
vet·er·an /ˈvedərən,ˈvetrən/
a person who has served in the military.SSG Travis Mills coined the term “recalibrated veteran” after he lost portions of all of his limbs in an IED explosion while serving our in Afghanistan. He was injured and healed; he didn’t want to be called a “wounded warrior” – his wounds had healed. Instead, he referred to himself as recalibrated. He adjusted to his new normal; he recalibrated.
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The Yawl
29 x 19 inches, sold
One of those coastal days with the sun just behind the haze, when everything feels white.
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painting interesting things
Painting interesting things has an inherent problem. Those interesting things are already, well, interesting. A tattooed woman is fascinating by herself and maybe a photo of her would be interesting as a beautiful record. But I feel a painting needs to be more. A beach scene may be beautiful by itself but there needs to me more than just a record of a beautiful day going on.
Some subjects make beautiful photographs but merely translating this into a painting does not give the painting reason for being. While photography, film and painting all share the realm of the visual arts, each has its own reason. Still photography has a power when it grabs an instant of REAL, a fleeting moment that captures something universal. A scene of a person underwater is fascinating in a real visual sense in a real photographic sense…but does a painting of this add anything? not really.
Film introduces the dimension of time giving the media a power that is initially daunting, to painting artists, when compared with a still painting. Film has a built-in power of time and also the strength of it being a medium of light.
The argument surfaces periodically that painting is dead…first maimed by photography and given the death cut by film. However, this misses the point of paint.
Paint has a power all its own. When we render something in paint each brushstroke is a personal mark. If a piece is created from hundreds, even thousands of pigmented marks a very personal statement is being made about a subject. The challenge as an artist is not to create a personal mark or signature stroke…but rather to create stroke that is good, build on another stroke that is good until a piece is complete.
A paintings is sum or quotient of all the things included, things left out and the manner they were brought to life. A great painting has an unmatched ability to live on a wall and breath with life every day. Film moving on a wall constantly would be initially fascinating and then soon annoying. Still photography can be eternal for walls but it is perhaps more difficult because a photograph is inherently mechanical…it takes a true artist to push through or beyond the mechanics of good photography to make something grand and personal.
Painting on the other hand is inherently personal. The challenge is not to compete with photography or film, or to try to somehow piggy back on the other two mediums, but rather to find paints core power and use it to create something good.
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Picasso, again and again
Picasso is worth looking at, again and again, though the world seems divided on that thought. Oh, his brush work is simplistic compared to Rembrandt. His use of color can’t compare with the mastery of a Cezanne still life, a Klimt or Matisse. Though precocious early with art skills he can’t compare with Bouguereau for beautiful rendering. And as for gritty anguish, Scheille or Van Gogh give him a serious run for his money.
Labels are clever but, at least in the arts, they do us a disservice. All too often we stop really looking once we have labelled, catalogued and shelved an artist. Picasso is a cubist. Done, boxed and packed neatly away.
In truth in Picasso’s career pure cubism was a sideline….or maybe a door to walk through to get to somewhere else.
Take one of his oft repeated subjects, the simple seated woman. Picasso is first and foremost a storyteller. When artists tell stories we often resort to props, drama of theatrical poses, color as mood and setting the scene, flashy brushstrokes to create energy.Here, with his seated women, Picasso is speaking of a full world of things from simple pleasure of an afternoon, to visions of love, erotic dreams, great luminous joy and playfulness reminding us that not all art need be dark…and bitter anguish…all with a simple Seated Woman.
The brilliance is that he is telling us the stories of these women by his use of form…not with props or dramatic gestures or dredged symbolism. He creates the endless new forms of a simple seated woman. Some are joyous, others so sad, or dreaming rich eroticism, and others simply enjoy a quiet day. And yet others, painted during the war, are often interpreted to show Picasso as a misogynist, but I think these speak more to the anguish during the bitter days of war in Paris.
These are not merely labelled, neat and tidy cubist experiments. He is speaking with shapes and forms. Telling stories with the actual creation of new arm, leg and head forms. Brilliance, well worth looking for.
That and the sheer playful creativity if it all. Picasso is not to be shelved. He is one of our great realistic storytellers.
