The taxman might be the Irish artists friend - but......
The year was 1969 - Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, was the location for Woodstock Music and Art Festival - Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel prize for literature - Neil Armstrong, the first man to leave a lunar module , was walking on the moon - " That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Meanwhile in Ireland, to be more precise, in the Irish Government, a young Finance Minister was attempting a giant leap that would dramatically change the tax status for Irish artists. The Finance Minister was Charles J Haughey 1966 - 1970
John Nolan on 10.31.04 @ 04:54 AM EST [more..]
Art, at its very core, reveals a standard of physical, spiritual, and emotional parameters we all share in as part of the human experience. History plays out a cycle of trials and tribulations common to living today - many ways the same as 100, or 30,000 years ago. Our needs, dreams, and desires, repeat themselves wherever human life has, does, or shall exist. From the cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc to the 'more contemporary' chronicles of Homer, or from our present-day studies of different cultures and their myths and legends, or in modern creative expressions - the struggles we discover are comparable throughout all of humanity's recorded history. There are so many themes centered on survival, or the yearning for approval and acknowledgment from loved ones, peers, and eternal makers… There is the division of uncertainties over our impermanence, and a varied inquisitiveness over a 'hereafter concept' ranging into many assortments of manner. From crude beginnings, we have come to look towards the cosmos, where, there is an assurance that however minute we feel, balanced to the whole of our universe, we each are still a component to the puzzle of this grand existence.
Digital art visualizes abstract science. The working e-artist always knows there is a precise mathematical base concealed within the patterns of chromatic pixels of light. Yet, instead of highlighting the math behind the art, most digital artists select to merely apply the power of the medium to express their own subjective view and feeling of life. The digital image "works" if it induces an emotional or harmonic resonance within the artist who orchestrates the composition.
It is fascinating to see how people, when they are the creators, show themselves in art and in artistic expressions. Already since a while I use it in my ‘The-Art-of-Living’ workshops.
Essentially my trip was over and it was just a matter of driving back through the panhandle of Oklahoma back to Columbus. The first stop was a return to Santa Fe where Michelle talked me into staying one extra day so we could climb another trail. We were up above the Pecos River climbing Round Mountain. At about 7000 ft we began to find large Mountain Lion scat along the trail. We’d just been watching the news coverage of the mountain lion who killed a guy and mauled a female hiker in California. I’d heard about it in Tucson but hadn’t caught any of the gruesome details until I hit Santa Fe. 
My fellow American artists, did you make your art stamps? If not, well tough luck, you're too late!
Since I started working as an artist in 1979 there where already artists working in nature. One of them Robert Smithson was actually making one of his major pieces close to my studio in the Netherlands. ‘Broken circle, spiral hill’ was located in a artificial lake near the city Emmen. But it was just an action of one artist and the piece will stay for many years. Even it is restored by time to time. Restoring of art pieces is not the idea behind the movement ‘art-in-nature’. The idea is to make art at nature locations like forests, natural reservations, lakes etc. that will only be there for a limited time. The concept is to bring artists together for some time and to encourage them to realise a piece just for a choosen place. It is site specific art but mostly with materials out of the natural environment itself. It has nothing to do with exhibiting already existing art-pieces (sculpture, paintings etc) in a natural environment.
