Ultra Celestial revealed

I usually don't get this excited about an image except when I feel that I've broken ground for myself artistically and see a whole new level emerging. A renewed creativity is part of it, but the main thing is that I know I've gone deeper into the Divine Imagination.

There is a palpable sense that I'm actually entering a "real" domain of being existing in some higher plane of existence. Many times it is a departure of my usual techniques and I feel like I'm free falling into a new reality.

In the case of this image I remember having a dream a few years ago of sitting in a room by a fireplace. Everything was pretty much the usual mundane reality until I looked up at someone sitting across from me. I was awestruck and in aethetic shock. He(she) was so resplendant with living jewels and energy pathways running up and down the body in streams of colored light, that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And it was like I knew this being somehow. I never forgot this encounter and did several drawings at the time to celebrate the dream-vision. So now as I look at, and work on, this latest Celestial Soul Portrait of my friend Arcturus RA, I realized that the energy muse from the previous dream was coming through me now in this image. I also realized that it took me a while to obtain the skill-set necesary to pull it off at all. Thank God for cellular memory :))

A new breed of Ultra-Celestial

Another great modern mystic and ascended master artist has left our kin. Sir Robert Venosa has become an ancestor. He, along with Alex Grey, assisted my soul's evolution many times and stood in the gap when all was seemingly too dark to continue. This is the power of art that it goes to the very core of our being and strikes a bright light that we may see our inner terrors and face them with courage and fortitude. To make the nightmares and epiphanies into art, and then add them to our collective visionary heritage, is a worthy way to spend our precious time here. To be allowed to see through their eyes and become a new thing by doing so, is to stand on their pioneering strength and move the culture a liitle bit further into the light.

Today after a difficult time of processing Roberto's passing, a new energy came into me that shattered and replaced the slighlty morbid sense of loss. Like a crysalis opening into a neworld I began to see more deeply into my work and took up a project that was slightly stagnant. And I saw once again that the Eternal Imagination always awaits us when we are ready to enter there. I knew with certainty that there is something that can await us, and enter us, that is so soul stirring and blindingly ecstatic that words trail off in the fairy dust of dreams to awaken a kind of 5th dimensional seeing.

I wrote this facebook post after creating a teaser image for the full image that was coming through me so passionately...

Get ready now. A new breed of Ultra-Celestial has entered our sphere. I bring him forward in stages as not to frighten the inner child. It may scare one to think that the intense joy within could be sooo good that you would cry out every day for the Incredible Brightness of Your Being...be ready! Do not turn away. It is true!!!

Tribute to Robert Venosa

In light of the passing of the extraordinary Visionary Master Artist Robert Venosa I wish to share this tribute by Alex Grey.

There is an element of our being that is timeless. No matter what happens to us in our lives, we carry within us a seed of immortality, an eternal flame that transcends the flesh. We burn through our bodies like a candle and shine for our brief duration. Mystics glimpse the heavens beyond the veil of space and time. They see the eternal luminous interconnectedness of all beings and things that undergird our manifest dimension. They recognize the vast, empty openness of the transcendental ground shared by all beings. This is our transhistorical nature. A realm of total creative freedom, ecstatic love and ultimate safety that is our collective Godself. Some artists paint their theophanies, introducing us to our own higher deeper dimensions.

Our friend and Visionary brother, Robert Venosa, has died. Sad news to all in the visionary community for whom he was an inspirational mentor and fountainhead. Roberto's artwork evoked the glistening jewel-like imaginal worlds inhabited by luminous celestial angels, with an utterly unique and finely crafted style. His work became familiar to an international audience through exhibitions and appearances, through his monographs, Manas Manna, Noospheres, and Illuminatus, through countless magazine and newspaper articles, plus his web presence. Many came to know him through the classes in "Painting the Fantastic" that he co-taught with his beloved partner, the distinguished artist, Martina Hoffmann. Venosa was a much sought-after keynote speaker at festivals and congresses of like-minded visionaries. He introduced H.R. Giger to Salvador Dali. He studied painting with the late great Mati Klarwein and the venerable Ernst Fuchs, later exhibiting with them as peers. Bridging the world-wide Visionary Art community, Venosa was an emissary of the power of imagination, a courageous artist willing to declare that his visions had sometimes been catalyzed by psychedelics. We send healing prayers to all that suffer from the loss of Roberto, especially his family and dear Martina who devotedly gave herself to his care.

We love you, Roberto. We bet heaven looks just like you painted it!

Each year, before the August Full Moon ceremony we honor members with a special meeting and barbecue. This Saturday, at 4PM, Alex and Allyson will lead a tour of CoSM highlighting the improvements and visions. Come early to the Full Moon on Saturday, become a member of CoSM and take a stand for Visionary Culture. Together our community will co-create the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

Love,

Alex and Allyson

The I AM presence poster.
Sometimes an image doesn't work the first round I approach it, but I usually store them in my computer anyway just in case. Later I may return and attempt to breathe some life into it and take it up another level. This is the case with this picture I call 'Beacon'. It was originally commissioned by the Children of the Sun Foundation, but languished in the "we might do this with it" category for some time. I left it alone for awhile and came back to it recently to see if I could actually get to like the image. Something was wrong from the beginning, yet I couldn't figure out what it was. Then it came to me. It was too etheric, one could hardly get close to it to access it's beauty. I decided to add some sexiness to it and create a new vibration sensation! The top one is the final version and the bottom the first takes.

PERFECT SOUL

Underneath the flesh of existence is an Eternal Soul here for a purpose.

Paying attention through time, one can begin to see and experience that which is missing.

It is the soul's purpose to create and become that missing piece.

In it's unmanisfect perfection it yearns to feel this perfection in physical form,

so it spends a lifetime attempting to find it.

This yearning for wholeness is the same motivation for the artist, who uses his tools to

describe this process.

Like chipping away the stone to free the perfect form, the true artists of life sculpt their vision.

In the end it can only be an approximation, and yet this work can be a "Work of Ages" if consistantly approached with sincerity and perserverance.

- Erial's Bedside Journal Nov 08

Inspirations

Your life is an ascending wave of purpose and possibility!

It yearns, burns, and is earned to be told!

It is the Universal Story - out of the darkness of limited belief and negative focus & into the light of infinite potentials realized!

The Uni-Verse (the ONE song) becoming conscious of itself.

Endlessly returning in the living spiral of your destiny fulfilling itself endlessly.

Conscious Evolution Incarnate!

-Erial's Bedside Journal Dec 08