Blind Reality (Quintuple Etheree Poem)
/human beings
cogitating on jazz music,
jazz penetrates the deep silence
of the bleeding angels,
angels in a fight for
the awakening of this blind reality,
Second Hand
/Je fais semblant
D’être un vivant à livre ouvert
Au centre d’un roman fiévreux
Le nez sur chaque phrase urgente
Et les yeux noyés dans un scénario
Qui importe peu après tout
Car il suffit qu’il y ait une histoire
Et quelques soldats envoyés au front
Pour que je respire à nouveau
Naturfice & Artiture
/Meanwhile, everywhere or most areas only ever wear or actually are and maybe even cause unchanging and sameness; never quite identical or repetitive; always or mainly invariable and uniform.
All that, despite perpetual self-conscious suspicion, awareness, sense and knowledge of need, desire, yearning and urge for rift against and away from majority and norm. Desperate and unrequited — but driving-fuel and life-force.
Not merely just more buildings or another physical presence, instead truly different and separate, special and unique.
If I Could Shrink My Hands and Feet to Make Men Comfortable, I’d Still Choose to Be The Tragic Giant Stomping on Their Gendered Expectations
/A boy in high school said my hands were too big.
Too much for a girl. (Do you understand?)
So I carried his words like a dead bird in my pocket.
I remember the shape of my daughter’s head.
How it fit in my palms. How I wondered if smaller
hands would have made a gentler cradle.
we settle into corners with the dust and mites
/The creative process is so essential because it provides an opportunity for us to learn how to commit to something, to an idea, to anything. In our current visual and media culture, we’re constantly pulled at a break-neck speed to the next thing, and then the next thing, and the next thing. By slowing down and fostering a Thing — whether it’s cupcakes for your daughter’s birthday party, an independent horror film, or a crocheted recreation of your childhood bedroom — from a loose inkling of an idea to the full presentation of the time, love, and pure dedication to the work of it, one can access an entirely new dimension of meaning. I didn’t know what it meant to connect with others’ creative works until I found myself engrossed in the process of creating Something.
ectoplasm
/Art is an essential part of our world. It gives shape to the invisible, revealing, as in this photo, what escapes the first glance. It is also a means of escape. Unable to leave my Parisian apartment, I capture symbols, details imperceptible to the naked eye—fragments of reality that reveal themselves differently through the lens.
A Moment in the Sun
/By Kelsey Overstreet
The creative process is important because it allows us to contribute to society. It allows moments of pause, contemplation, joy, activation, curiosity, wonder and beauty. The arts have always been the pulse of a society and it’s essential for humanity. /The arts and humanities help us to explore what it means to be human. When we engage with great works of art or literature, we confront gfundamental questions about life, love, death, justice and meaning. This leads to greater self-awareness and emotional intelligence. The arts teach us to think creatively and express ourselves in new ways. This creative thinking isn’t just valuable for artists- it’s essential for innovation in all its fields, including science and business. Learning to think “outside the box” starts with exposure to creative works and ideas.
This painting is a meditation on light, shadow, and the interplay of the known and unknown within our lives. On a large canvas, I have carefully traced the shadows cast by various objects – some manmade, some natural – on both the front and back sides. The front displays the expected, familiar shadows we consciously cast into the world through our words, actions, and creations. The back reveals the shadows we unconsciously project, the aspects of ourselves we may not fully understand or control. By giving these traced shadows physical form through embroidery, I elevate both sides to an equal plane. The intricate stitching weaves through the imprints of light and dark, blurring the lines between what we can master and what remains beyond our grasp. There is beauty in both the distinct outlines we impose and the amorphous, undulating shapes that emerge organically. This philosophy connects to Carl Jung’s theories about the unconscious mind and its powerful influence over our conscious selves. The shadows on the back of the canvas represent our hidden complexes, repressed ideas, and untapped potentials – the unseen forces that can guide or derail us. By bringing these shadows into the light through my art, I suggest we should embrace the totality of our psyches. The celebrated poet and philosopher John O’Donohue also spoke of engaging with our multifaceted interior landscapes. In his writing, he urged reverence for “the inviolable dignity of the unknown solitudes” within us. My embroidered shadows echo this sense of wonder and respect for the mysteries pulsing beneath the surface. By interweaving what we can see and understand with what remains elusive, this painting is an ode to the broad spectrums of light, dark, and sacred uncertainties that co-exist within each human soul. I invite viewers to honor the dance of conscious and unconscious, control and surrender.
My latest painting is a meditation on light, shadow, and the interplay of the known and unknown within our lives. On a large canvas, I have carefully traced the shadows cast by various objects – some manmade, some natural – on both the front and back sides. The front displays the expected, familiar shadows we consciously cast into the world through our words, actions, and creations. The back reveals the shadows we unconsciously project, the aspects of ourselves we may not fully understand or control. By giving these traced shadows physical form through embroidery, I elevate both sides to an equal plane. The intricate stitching weaves through the imprints of light and dark, blurring the lines between what we can master and what remains beyond our grasp. There is beauty in both the distinct outlines we impose and the amorphous, undulating shapes that emerge organically. This philosophy connects to Carl Jung’s theories about the unconscious mind and its powerful influence over our conscious selves. The shadows on the back of the canvas represent our hidden complexes, repressed ideas, and untapped potentials – the unseen forces that can guide or derail us. By bringing these shadows into the light through my art, I suggest we should embrace the totality of our psyches. The celebrated poet and philosopher John O’Donohue also spoke of engaging with our multifaceted interior landscapes. In his writing, he urged reverence for “the inviolable dignity of the unknown solitudes” within us. My embroidered shadows echo this sense of wonder and respect for the mysteries pulsing beneath the surface. By interweaving what we can see and understand with what remains elusive, this painting is an ode to the broad spectrums of light, dark, and sacred uncertainties that co-exist within each human soul. I invite viewers to honor the dance of conscious and unconscious, control and surrender.
www.kelseyoverstreet.com
The Creative Process is created with kind support from the Jan Michalski Foundation.
I’ll be the garden
/By Dick van Dijk
The creative process is important to me personally as a way of expressing personal stories and thoughts, that hopefully have meaning for more people. My work is about intimacy, love and freedom, which all seem at risk in the larger society. Therefor it is important that the work is ‘loving’ in terms of feeling it evokes but also in the brushstrokes. Queer imagery still lacks in art collections (although a lot is happening), and I find it often navigates between the explicit (sexual) in ‘gay’ art and the invisible (“just friends”) in commercial manifestations. I like to be somewhere ‘inbetween’.
My work is always based in human interaction, small acts of intimacy, close to the skin, attempting to transcend the literal moment. I am very inspired by contemporary artists such as Adrian Ghenie , featured on your site, or Cecily Brown and old masters such as El Greco.
Dick is an Amsterdam-based painter. His work is inspired by the male figure. Dick’s process is one he likens to collage: assembling, de-constructing, and reconstructing collections of layers, full of incident and surprise, reworking scenes from everyday life. Through painterly discoveries during the working process, new dynamics emerge. www.dick-vandijk.nl
The Creative Process is created with kind support from the Jan Michalski Foundation.
Somatic Veil
/The arts, culture, and the creative process are the heartbeats of human expression, connecting us across time, space, and diverse perspectives. They allow us to explore our shared humanity, challenge norms, and inspire innovation. Arts and humanities help us understand who we are and where we come from, fostering empathy and encouraging critical thinking. This project resonates deeply with the need to celebrate and preserve the richness of human experience, giving voice to untold stories and nurturing creativity in a rapidly evolving world. To expand this celebration, you might explore the intersection of technology and the arts, amplify marginalized voices, and highlight the ways in which cultural heritage and contemporary expression can coexist and inspire one another.
The Rainbow Woman
/The blue woman~alive
knows the meaning of things
and the hue of His visions.
Thinks to survive.
Absently slipping her sight at the edge
of the reality~
ruins, cracked mountains, and
rolling rocky rains
when the divine penetrates her within.
Hot Landscape
/The rise of more forest fires everywhere in the world. This work was created after I spent a summer in Southern Europe. In France and Spain, in the wonderful mountainous areas, with beautiful sunsets and lovely landscapes that are so dear to me, there were lots of fires in 2023. Smoke was somewhre behind the mountaintops constantly, At noght fire fighter helicopters flew over. And it is happening everywhere in the world. The world is heating up, making our landscapes hot, and maybe unlivable in the future for ourselves.
The Vital Force – Joy
/The Vital Force - JOY work is from my collection: ”Beautiful Coexistence" which is an ode to the force of nature and the energy that creates life and that consumes life. To the sentiments, emotions and fears that make life an exciting adventure! Visualizing the dynamics and conflicting realities through the use of many fragmentary hand-drawn and digital layers, my paintings are a kind of pentimenti...Unique images of the coexistence that shift between the recognizable and the abstract to build unexpected and memorable pictures.
Unique depictions of the coexistence that move between the recognizable and the abstract, creating memorable images of humanity as an integral part of nature and which invisible forces shape our world.
The Black Widow
/She sat on the curb and stretched her legs out
and waited for some car to come;
in far nights when her husband coughed, the walls
of their shack got everyone up when they shook,
she wanted to be the one to stand against
the TB he had contracted underground
while looking for stones for the nice lady,
during the days of shackles, blue coal and glass
from the earth, gold for the queen’s chandelier
and diamonds for pink fingers. This is what
the police knew of her. She gripped the edge
of the ledge behind her as a car approached,
and pushed herself in again, her heart certain
that it must know, now, what this felt like.
we lit their skillet
/surface mixes the weather,
cowed, potent clouds then kisses
of fire stolen together
with vapors purse-proud, hisses
tween
/Watching my daughter climb this majestic live oak, unfettered and unafraid, the visual metaphor was abundantly clear. Who could resist the lure of that tangle of branches that travel so high to a magical perch with the owls? Of course, I want her to feel this pull and feel her strength to climb to the top. But from the ground, I see the treacherousness of all of it, all that I can't control or protect her from, and all of the letting go that lies ahead. As a painter, I wanted to capture how the gesture of her body was in unison with the tree--I could see the specific and the infinite at the same time--and the rhythm of the shapes, negative and positive, that seemed to tell the story for me.
Good Night Hotel Triptych
/Through my work, I strive to bring together the multifaceted aspects of life experience as ingredients for a fresh and exploratory worldview. It is an attempt to present these phenomena in a visual language that is focused enough to address the issue at hand, yet broad enough to transfer coherent concepts without being colloquially or culturally exclusive. In essence, I see them as contemporary visual sutras, to be pondered, absorbed, and considered. The various facets of an image are in essence seeds which are planted upon viewing, then integrate with the viewer's sense of self, stimulating and provoking a broader mindset.
Blind Reality (Quintuple Etheree Poem)
/Hollow-eyed shades
of human beings,
human beings
cogitating on jazz music,
jazz penetrates the deep silence
of the bleeding angels,
angels in a fight for
the awakening of this blind reality,
Cities of Refuge
/The arts and humanities open up our imagination. They encourage critical thinking and broad viewing of our present on the one hand, and allow for day-dreaming on the other. And the ability to imagine other futures, other realities or existences - is what allows for change.
Clementines
/I wrote this for my mother,
for her mother,
for my grandmother’s mother,
and for her mother before her.
Poet on Song Podcast
/Art is more than an aesthetic pursuit—it is a bridge to the deeper realms of human understanding, where emotion and wisdom intertwine. At its core, creativity grants us access to the most profound aspects of our minds, those spaces where empathy flourishes and meaning emerges. The act of making, of bringing something into existence, is the purest expression of our humanity. It is here, in the act of creation, that we transcend the ordinary and touch something universal. Art captures the undercurrents of feeling, distills them into form, and aligns them with insight, offering not just beauty but a profound way of seeing the world. This is why your project resonates so deeply with me. It understands that beauty is not just decoration but a design of understanding—an endeavor that, like the wisdom of the empathetic, seeks to engage and foster community.