AmsterdamEnjoy heeft voor de editie van December-Januari 2012 een interview gedaan met Andrew Jones:

Apocalyptic art shaman

The work of Android Jones is a hybrid of academic training, emerging technology and the mystical experience. His digital art adorns the cover of this edition, and more works can be found throughout the magazine. Enough reason to get answers for some of the question you might have.

When and why did you first started making art?

My parents were painters and while in preschool, I painted a picture of a caterpillar which the teacher thought was something really special. So she encouraged my parents to get me into private lessons and that started my life as an artist. I've been painting ever since.

I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Computer Animation, and received classical academic artistic training from masterElvie Davis. I also took a semester off and went to medical school to dissect cadavers. I used that time to really get in close to these cadavers and learn anatomy. You don't really forget it once you cut open somebody's back. It's a great way of burning images into your mind.

How did you become the only North American concept artist to work for Nintendo?

I moved to Europe because I needed a change from living and working in California. I actually sold everything and quit my job and was living in Europe as a portrait artist, just working, living off the street, and traveling around in a real gypsy-like, nomadic life. Then I received an email from a friend telling me about a job opening at Nintendo's. So I sent in my portfolio, and they liked what they saw and offered me the job. From there, not only did the ideas keep coming, but the work kept coming to me as well.

What kind of medium do you prefer for your art?

I was exposed to the digital side of the arts pretty early. I remember fooling around with Painter 1.0 when it was sold in something like a paint can. At the time, I was really into markers and pencils, so it was hard for the original programs to compete with that. When the first Wacom tablet(electronic pen/brush) came out, towards the end of 1998, I really got stuck into Painter. I never really looked back, because I was sold on the digital medium from then on.

Digital is great.With it you get light, pixels and energy; it's a beautiful medium but it does sometimes leave you wanting more from the tangible world. That's why for instance I also do bodypainting sometimes. It's the most tangible of all because not only am I using real medium, like propellants, airbrush and stencils, but I'm painting on living canvases. It's very much like Zen-Buddhist sandpainting, you know, it's 'only there for so long'.

Can you tell us a bit more about your more recent projects?

I have been working on building online and physical communities through collective sites such as www.conceptart.org and www.dreamcatcher.net. I have also done a lot of festivals: designing and building large-scale interactive installations at events like Boom and Burning Man.For the last one I also designed this year's tickets, which felt like a great honor. Recently, I did a live art project covering the exterior and interior of the Sydney Opera house, another great honor and experience.

www.androidjones.com

Visionary artist Amanda Sage

Amanda Sage is at the forefront of a new breed of visionary/interdimensional artists using art as a tool for personal, spiritual, planetary growth and transformation.

Amanda was born April 19, 1978 in Denver, Colo­rado to her mother YOU and father Jackson, with two brothers still to come. Her childhood was filled with healthy, tropical, media-free, creative freedom in Florida without the distraction of formal schooling until she entered 4th grade in Colorado.

After graduating she went to Bali as a volunteer for close to a year, and amongst other projects & exotic distractions, illustrated an herbal book with over 70 indigenous plants and herbs for the natural Birthing Clinic, now called Bumi Sehat.
 Through meeting Philip Rubinov Jacobson and Michael Fuchs in 1996, she was invited to do a private 2 year intensive experiment to study the techniques of painting and etching of the old masters as an apprentice under the classical/fantastic artist Michael Fuchs in Vienna Austria. Following this in 1999 Michael introduced her to his father, internationally famed godfather of Fantastic and Visionary Art, Ernst Fuchs, and she has since been a student and painting assistant on various projects throughout Europe. Michael taught her to “see” the world around her through the brush and the Old Master techniques in painting. Ernst has reminded her to “listen”, which has opened up other ways of ”seeing” and perceiving.

She has exhibited solo and in group shows in galleries, salons and in various projects/events worldwide since 1999, including London, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Bali, Colorado, Seattle, San Francisco, and most exo-tically at Burning Man, hanging next to renowned visionary artists and friends such as Alex Grey & Allyson Grey, Martina Hoffmann, Robert Venosa, & many amazing artists involved in the growing movement of Visionary Art.

www.amandasage.com

Luke Brown is an intrepid explorer, part of a new generation of visionaries recontructing the templates of culture as we know it. His art speaks of the spiritual mysteries in the human imagination.

Mystical experiences, dreams, medicine journeys, and channelled lucid dialogues with the source of creativity itself, seem to guide and be guided by the colourful symmetries and living surfaces of his art. Much of his work emerges from a graceful synthesis of digital and painting mediums. Developing his work through mix and remix technologies, Luke is constantly redefining his style as a spiritual medium for growth. He is intent on mapping his hyperspatial experiences with utmost accuracy, with whichever medium seems best suited, as a form of multidimensional cartography.

His art has been shown internationally with such visionary heavyweights such as Alex Grey, HR Giger, Robert Venosa and Ernst Fuchs. He is currently a resident of the lush Elfinstone rainforest in BC Canada, one of an infinite number of parallel universes in which he resides within simultaneously.

Birth: Out of the flower on top, in a shower of Light new Baby’s are falling onto a heart shaped World. As Life begins all seems lovely, pink and positive. The Buddha is a big temple, a meditation cathedral, that I one day hope to realize. On the Pink Elephant you see the three races of People; Asian, African and European living in harmony.

http://www.kamiel-proost.com/

Life: As we grow up, the chaos of Life starts surrounding us. We end up in traffic jams, drown in desires, make Fools out of ourselves or get beaten up by the police. There is two ways of looking at it: On the left island you see a Buddha observing the world in acceptance. On the right we see a skull island with a Doomsday Prophet screaming at the world that it should change, or else...

Death: All suffering disappears when we die. That’s why the skeletons are all dancing laughing and juggling; they laugh at Life‘s complications. Under the rose we see the tunnel of White Light. The Source of our Souls that takes us up when we die... only to be reborn again, and fall upon the world as new Baby’s... The title ‘The Ship of Fools’ came from a popular medieval book ‘Das Narrenshiff’, a satire about the human weakness and folly.

Geboren in Bhutan als kind nadat zijn ouders vluchtten uit Tibet, groeide Tashi op in de kloosters van de Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. Hier werd al snel zijn schildertalent ontdekt en kreeg hij les van de beste leraren.

Hij kreeg toestemming de muren van de leslokalen te beschilderen en werkte enkele jaren voor de Office van de Dalai Lama als thangkaschilder. Inmiddels is hij uitgegroeid tot de beste thangkaschilder ter wereld en woont hij alweer 8 jaar in België waar hij studeerde aan de kunstacademie om zich te bekwamen in de westerse kunst.