Reaching For the High Note, Venus Oil Study
Venus of the Planets
Joy Riding Decades ago at 2:30 a.m. on a back street in La Jolla, I was arrested driving my mom’s ’68 Firebird 400 convertible. I had our tiny mutts Nikki and Dinky as passengers. I was 12 years old. The feeling of driving was incredibly delicious. Riding home in the back of the cop car, …
An American Journey
It was almost the ideal art existence. As I finished the paintings and saw that they were forming a coherent whole, I experienced a pull to display them, which runs counter to the solitary life of painting. I was happy, content, and financially okay. Why mess that up?
Grateful
Grateful, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. In the last year I have been feeling grateful for friends, the beauty of Idyllwild, the ability to create so freely, and being in the right place to enjoy them all so much. How does an atheist find images to express that? These overlapping hands had an …
Idyllwild Paintings 2013 – 2017
PREVIEW Just published, available in Coffee Table Book and Kindle formats. From the inside jacket cover: Idyllwild Paintings is a journey from the indifferent art scene of Downtown L.A. to the granite mountains of Idyllwild. In danger of losing the meaning of being an artist, Michael Newberry sought a place to explore depth, death, love, …
Winter
Idyllwild is a mythic place, if I were religious, I would say it one of God's gardens. Indeed, if you were to wander the remote paths, you might actually come across a forest nymph interacting with nature. This year I made friends with Katie Bolin and her mate Ivan Ellirand, starting with a life-size …
Tats Series
Earlier today I signed off on the third tattoo painting. The series was a fascinating excursion in which I contemplated how we sometimes become the artwork. I have always thought that was true in a metaphorical way, in the sense that when we are young, we often form our characters, unwittingly, by the influence of …
Of Nudes and Knowledge
Figure the Future, 66 min
Figure the Future By Michael Newberry Presented by The Atlas Society, 2008 The premise of this talk is that the heroic and beautiful nude is contemporaneously linked with human evolutionary advancements. The great nudes witnessed the development of individuals rights in politics, with reason replacing superstition in the humanities, and with authenticity.
Michael Newberry 