The new batch of shirts are ready! Good news is that I’ll have a site up for the shirts up this weekend. Until then you can contact me at
matthew.canale@gmail.com. I am also printing all of the shirts on American Apparel. Made in the USA. So that’s good. All of the proceeds go to Golden Drum a community center that helped create in Brooklyn.
I was at Occupy Wall Street the other day with some friends. They were helping facilitate a Meditation Flash Mob. It is an event where people come together at a specific time and place to sit and meditate in public. It was the first time that I had attended one. It became obvious to me why what we were doing was so important. People need to see peace. It is not so often that people can be seen in a state of peace. Sometimes, just seeing people meditating is enough for others to be more calm. It is from that place of stillness that we can connect to the heart. We will not win over anyone through anger and aggression. If we are to proceed, we must come from a place of love and compassion. This is not a call to passivity. This is an invitation to connect to the space from within. If we are firmly rooted in peace and truth we will create the change that we wish to see in the world by first emodying that change. This shirt is a symbol of that spirit that I invite more people to represent in this great time of change.
Below are some photos of a test print that I made in the print lab the other day and the other is of my screen that I’ve been using. Enjoy!
I had the pleasure of having lunch with my grandmother yesterday. We usually go to a restaurant with paper and crayons on the tables. I always doodle something when I go there. The restaurant has picture frames all over the walls with drawings that customers make. When I was little I wanted to get my drawing up on the wall so badly. The manager would always come and tell me he would hang up my drawing but he never did and I never knew where all the drawings went. Now I just rip the drawings off the table and give them to my grandmother. I realize now that I should have been doing that anyway.
My grandmother doesn’t like getting her picture taken. Below is a representation of how much she doesn’t like having her picture taken. Peace.
Write to your grandmother. Write to your parents. Write to a sister or brother. Write to a friend. Call, draw, sing, dance, create for others. Do it for yourself. Show love. Always.
. . .
I made this a few months ago when I was in the Dominican Republic. It was a very relaxing trip. The land is so lush and beautiful and it really seemed like people had a sense of responsibility when it came to their relationship to nature. That meaning that they actually wanted to take care of it. For a while now the heart has been a big thing for me. At the moment it seems like it probably will be for a long time. At times I feel as though my heart is on fire spiritually as I continue to do the things that I love. It has empowered me to keep moving forward. Its drawings like these that help me connect back to that feeling.
Hi Everyone. I’m catching up on a lot of things tonight and I thought sitting down to share about one of my new projects should definitely one of them. For over a year now I’ve been giving classes in NYC and talking about the art of lucid dreaming. One of the things that I’ve heard from a lot of people is that they enjoyed the workshops but were wondering if there was a way to follow up to make it easier for them to develop a regular practice. Even I’ll admit that there’s a lot of things to learn and process when it comes to delving into the world of dreams. One thing that I came to realize that it really helps to have other people to share the journey with. Even though dreaming is an amazingly personal experience we often are blind to many of the messages that come to us. Its amazing what a little shift in perspective can do to illuminate what our dreams are trying to tell us.
Sharing our dreams can be amazingly healing. One of the greatest benefits of becoming part of a dream meet up group is that you get to put yourself in the shoes of others. You get to see the real fears of people which in many cases are quite similar to your own. A friend talked to me the other day about how he heard 20 people talk about their dreams one day. He was amazed by how similar they all were! When we consider that we all feel the same emotions its really not that crazy of a thought. It seems like we are so separate but we are all working with very similar building blocks that make up our life experience. Once we realize that I believe it makes life a little bit more manageable. Its some what comforting to know that your anger is the same as some one else’. It may even look different when it is expressed in waking life or in a dream. We are all on a journey of learning and I think if we can be there for each other as we go through our own personal transformations then we will all be stronger for it.
I hope to see you at one of the upcoming Shamanic Dream Collective gatherings soon. Our next meet up is on June 22nd at 8pm at Golden Drum 97 Green St Apt G24 Brooklyn, NY. Until then, much love.
These sculptures are so amazing. I love having them here around to look at for the time that they are here. They literally electrify the place with energy. It really has inspired me to use more color in my work. This is a little bit more controlled for the sake of trying to accurately depict the piece. Its currently still for sale and will be around till the end of the week. The work is really a symbol of these people. They know that they live in harmony with the earth and could very easily create a foundation that would reach out to people that care about their plight and send money to help their community. Instead they offer a service and heal themselves by creating beautiful art that can be given and sold to other people so the village can support itself. With focus and intention, a person’s art can support an entire group of people. That’s what I’m learning about with my own work. I need to know that its possible. I need to understand that this doodling has a purpose and all of this is going somewhere. I need to know that this is one of the gifts that I’ve been given and that the more I use that gift the more I heal others and the more I heal myself. This is my lesson.
Its been a while since I’ve painted anything. I’ve gotten so use to the computer and oils have been so toxic that I haven’t even considered picking up a brush for a while. However, I thought that it was time for a change of pace with this last project. The heart has been a focus of mine for a while now in my own personal studies. Recently, I purchased an anatomical model to have on my desk to remind me of the importance of it. With mother’s day coming up as well as the birthday of a good friend I wanted to create something from the heart as well so I decided I would paint again and see what would happen. It was a frustrating experience at first when I began with watercolors and gauche. Eventually I move to acrylic and found it to be a lot more forgiving. The background is based off of the central stained glass window pattern found in Chartes Cathedral. There is so much to learn from sacred geometry as they are the forms that are the building blocks of reality. Here is a documentary about how this geometry that influenced the design of the cathedral that is truly on of the wonders of the world.
Slipping off into some other dimension on this one. Coming or going? I can’t exactly say. Some landscapes are suppose to be left alone. This particular one started as a sketch and then I used some colored pencil and then dissected it in Photoshop to give it some more depth. I want to get lost here for a little while. Kinda feel like I have.
All I can really say is that I’m consistently creating things that leave me scratching my head and I like it. In a sense I really have been here. After meditating about the piece for a little while, I really feel like this is place where I’ve been. The longer I worked on it, the more I felt this to be true. A place from my imagination perhaps, but when I was working on it I knew where everything was spatially and the sensations around me. I pictured being under one of the large leaves laying on the cool pavement while the telephone wires buzzed above. I was in the backseat of the car looking through the front window at the legs of a big yellow floating monstrosity. He seemed harmless enough. The way I see it, this place that I’ve made is real in the same way that my dreams are real. Yes, I don’t experience either with my physical body but when I’m in the act of dreaming or painting I am having the experience of being there in that moment. It’s been a great project for me. I can’t wait to go somewhere else!
I’ve been thinking about the apparent speed of dreams. When we are in the dream it seems to be moving just as quickly as our waking life. However, most of our dreams only last about 5 minutes when they can appear to last hours. So you can say that creativity is moving at a higher speed or frequency than the ordinary state of the conscious mind. Maybe remembering our dreams could be compared to getting off the highway. If you want to make a smooth exit with you car intact you need to decelerate gradually to make a safe and complete stop. If we want to retain our dream experience we need to foster an environment that allows our mind to retain our experience by realizing that we are going through a large shift in consciousness.
Maybe another way to look at it is thinking about our dream experience like an egg. When we wake up we decide the future of the egg. Does it splat against the alarm clock as we become startled and realize that we’re late for work? Does it land safely into a pile of feathers as we wake up with the awareness that we are awake and safe in our bed with plenty of time to get ready for the day? Does it land at all? Perhaps it remains suspended in air as we see it from all angles. Once I have fully processed, I would like to cook that egg and eat it for breakfast! Yum! We all need to learn how we can better guide this delicate transition along. Then we can begin to develop our dream recall in a very powerful way. The choice is ours.
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