“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol 
Like a sandcastle, all is temporary. Build it, |
| Rock Castle 30X30 Oil on Canvas |
| This is more than a cairn. It’s a Rock Castle I found late one evening on Lake Superior's rocky shore. I love the makers creative design. This person is building more than a cairn, they are building a dream. Unfortunately, as a photographer, I found the late evening light disappointing. I photographed it anyway, but later, when creating this painting I changed the lighting to bring out the textures and shapes of the stacked rocks. The art of this cairn builder inspired me. I consider Rock Castle to be a collaboration with another artist I've never met. |
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Rock, Paper Scissors 30x30 Oil on Canvas |
It’s very simple. Look, scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and as it always has been rock crushes scissors. -The Big Bang Theory |
| That’s not very simple. Maybe life is becoming too complex for me. A phone ringing in my pocket, a wrist watch that monitors my heart, and all that crap on “social media”. And on television, a show about really brainy people who don’t have enough sense to know when to come out of the rain. What happened to a simple walk in the woods, or reading a newspaper while sitting on a toilet? I know the Big Bang Theory is funny, but life is not that complicated. Lord, give me an opportunity to walk in the woods, and build a cairn so others can follow. |
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Cairns represent a trail marker that guides one through uncertain areas of life. They Provide guidance, hope, balance, continuity, and confidence on the journey down the path of life. -John P. Kreamer
| Supporting Our Dream 14X11, Acrylic on Board |
| Cairns are rocks stacked on top of each other. It takes at least three rocks to make a cairn. All over the world, from ancient times until present, from mountains to deserts and distant coasts, people have built cairns. Sometimes they mark a trail, a significant place or tomb, serve as communication, have a religious meaning or an artistic purpose. Cairns are built with careful effort - they don't just appear randomly in nature. Stones don't drop out of the sky and stack themselves naturally into stable structures. Only man can make a cairn and only man can give it meaning. Supporting Our Dream is a painting of a simple cairn, but I see much more. I envision it as a couple, precariously leaning on each other to support their dream, whether it be a family, children, an adventure, or something special only to them. |
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“Balance is not something you find, it's something
you create.” - Jana Kingsford
| Cairn in the Morning Mist 48X24 Oil on canvas |
| Cairns have become a personal symbol in my quest to live a well-balanced life. You start with a solid foundation stone and build from there. Day-by-day, year-by-year, we build our inner cairn constantly balancing the many facets of our lives – personal pursuits, professional goals, relationships, order, rhythm and harmony. When they are out of balance our cairn falls down. Failure? No, but we must rebuild our cairn all over again. When our life is balanced we feel it. Balance is an internal state. When I come across someone else’s cairn, sitting strong on the edge of a great lake, or precariously on a windswept promontory, I know I have found another seeker searching for balance in their lives. Seeing these creative stacks of rocks created and left behind by others, inspires my paintings. I consider these paintings to be collaborations with seekers I’ve never met. The painting, Cairn in the Morning Mist, was inspired by a cairn built a couple feet offshore in Lake Superior near Grand Marais, Minnesota. The sun was just rising through the early morning mist.
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So why would you want to paint rocks?
| Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on an Ozark Creek gravel bar picking up ancient smooth stones and throwing them in the fast flowing stream “Plunk". Pick up another one. "Plunk", the sound of the rock splashing in the water. My mother said I would spend hours entertaining myself tossing those rocks. At about nine years old on a family vacation out west I went into my first rock shop and truly discovered the beauty of rocks. Rocks have color, shape, texture, weight and strength; the very same characteristics I try to capture in paintings today. I saw my very first cairn on a fishing trip to Canada. We were driving along a gravel road and about every mile or so there would be a stack of rocks along the side of the road. Stopping at a gas station the attendant explained they are "cairns", used to mark trails and guide people to their destinations. The natural world and the environment have always been a powerful influence in my art, but so has man and our relationship to the environment. A rock is nature, but it can be a trail marker, a man can stack rocks and turn them into a symbol, a fence, a shelter or even an exquisite sculpture. It is where nature and man come together I create may best paintings. North shore Cairn is one of my earliest paintings, inspired by cairns found on Lake Superior. My goal was to work with a monochromatic palette where the lighting, values and texture are key. In Northshore Cairn you can see the heavy influence of the mid 20thcentury photographers, Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams.
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Garry McMichael