"Japanese Geisha #38" Painting

“I guess the best way to say it is to become acquainted with your own methods of interpreting your own ideas, visions, pics, etc. Most artists will give a realistic reflection of what they see, but nothing more. You are striving for that which you feel, the precise sensation of an hour and place, the mood of a season; your work is qualified by a power of suggestiveness rarely seen in regular art. Usually the regular artist renders minute detail; he satisfies the imagination he evokes. But you either suppress or idealize detail, steep your distances in mist, band your landscape with cloud, make of your experience a memory in which only the strange and the beautiful survive-with their sensations. You surpass imagination, excite it and leave it hungry with the hunger of charm perceived in glimpses only. Nevertheless, in such glimpses you are able to convey the feeling of a time, the character of a place, after a fashion that seem magical. You are a painter of recollections and sensations, rather than of clear-cut realities; and in this lies the secret of your amazing power, a power that is not to be appreciated by those who have never witnessed the scene of your inspiration. You are above all things impersonal. Your human figures are devoid of individuality, yet they have inimitable merit as embodying the characteristics of a class-the childish curiosity of the uneducated youth, the shyness of the maiden, the fascination of the beholder, the self-consciousness of the Celtic warrior, the quiet prettiness of the child, the resigned gentleness of age, the beauty and power of nature. Only practice and observation are the influences which develop this art; it is never a growth of schools or studios."--a genuine outlier Irish Shaman, who I know, and is probably one of the smartest people alive regarding our universe.|||


“Hey Shawn, I love your enthusiasm and excitement. You make me smile”--Joelle, art promoter of my Teacher, Ning Hou|||


“Yours is the best piece in the show, even though you didn’t win ‘best of show’ you should have got it, your painting made me cry, which never happens anymore, you have “it”, hardly anyone has “it”, most of what’s out there is commercial fluff with no meaning, or sensational, attention getting work.