Subsequently,  my journeys took me afar with long sojourns in San Francisco and London, plus a few years immersed in the romantic artistry of Europe.During my travels, I started my career painting fantasy finishes and murals on interior walls, learning to ‘paint on the job’.

Later in life when I began to paint on canvas, I sourced these techniques.   I never ‘know’ what I am going to paint, rather, laying down  transparent oil paint which gives me a place to begin. After ‘breaking the surface’ of the colour with brushes, cloth or other tools, I allow the patterns in the paint to guide me,  discovering imagery  within the layers. Thus the stories unfold as I watch.

ART, ANIMALS and HEALING
I paint FROM the experience of connecting with animals, soul to soul if you like,  capturing their Essence.

Through my painting process which I call Vision Drawing, I hope to capture the true essence and spirit of animals, infusing each painting with the humanity and sentience that I’ve come to deeply appreciate

Today animals and art are my life.  How to  create a safer place in this world for animals? This question informs every aspect of my life and the choices I make.  I am not perfect, but I  feel I share a wound with animals who suffer and  I want to do anything I can to help make the world a kinder, safer place for them.

For me it is about winning their heart, by offering love, kindness and friendship-.a loving partner who has no need to prove herself. Content, solid, reliable, caring and trustworthy. A human who seems to be capable of feeling into them, understanding their world view, communicating with them, listening to them and wanting to understand. Mostly being together, sharing nice times without asking for anything in return.  This is why I have called my way with animals – . Becoming Kindred Spirits. Simply I want to love animals completely, being authentic and understanding of our differences and similarities.

On the other side I experience such joy and heartfelt aliveness when I am with animals, the world is put to right. Healed animals, loved unconditionally can show us a way to heal the human heart by just sharing space. A supportive space to practice another way of being. Otherwise animals are purely a broken mirror reflecting back at us our own brokenness as humans.

One of my passions is to support a small group of organisations that are sanctuaries for wild animals damaged by their interaction with humans.
I have had the privilege of spending time just ‘BEING’ with individual animals, something I would never normally be able to do especially with animals in the wild.

Several peak experiences changed the path of my life taking my connection with animals to a whole new level.
I now believe that an emotional connection with an animal —-particularly a wild one-  is what most people need to truly care enough to want to protect them.

In the words of David Attenborough –
~No One will protect what they don’t care about,   
And no one will CARE about
what they have NEVER EXPERIENCED.~

If we can’t envision a compassionate, kind world for animals, How can we create one!   The world would be an empty canvas without them.

Thank you for visiting my Artsite.   I will share some of my stories and paintings on my journal page so visit again soon.

Keep creative – blaze

“Your art give me a sense the animals are looking back from a physical environment which we humans think belongs exclusively to us. You seem to propose that we are over stating our importance, that we are wrongheaded considering ourselves the top species. You are portraying the natural order as it really is, rather than the way our group ego has it reconstructed. …..
Your art is an honest voice of nature, correcting the story, showing us the error of our ways. As a human I am left saying to myself  ‘please stop behaving like that, you are messing everything up.”  ~  Mike