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I have a very brief description of my creative life and a longer version for those with more time and interest.

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THE BRIEF BIO VERSION

 

 

I studied art at Clemson University, the University of Santa Barbara, and Chico State University for over eight years, extending from 1969 to 1985. I also apprenticed under the nationally known artist Richard Goetz in the mid-seventies for a short time. I moved away from the gallery/museum scene in 1996 to delve deeply into the study of perception and its relationship to the creative process. I wanted to focus on creating a body of work free of any influence of the art market. This journey into the study of perception would extend beyond the next two decades through long periods of focused awareness and open-eyed meditation as I studied the landscapes before me, sometimes eight or more hours a day. I continued to paint during this time to express the realizations I was having and to incorporate them into this educational art website. The marriage of the concepts on the website coupled with my art felt like a Rubik’s cube coming together into one beautiful integrated whole. I sensed the website becoming a linchpin—a center from which my creative expressions could radiating out. In September of 2017, I started to exhibit my work publicly for the first time since 1996. It started with the Sausalito Art Festival, and the HarmonyUs Festival in 2017, the Edgewater Gallery in 2018, and the HarmonyUs Festival in 2018 and 2019.

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My illustrated book, Tōbē and the River Is arose out of my website as an alternative way to help people move into revelations of these heightened levels of perception through the experiences of the protagonist, Tō•bē. Since its release in 2016, it has won The Nautilus Book Award, The Ben Franklin Award, The Global eBook Award, and The New Apple Book Award.

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THE LONGER BIO VERSION

 

 

I was born on October 28th, 1950, and raised in a dairy farm community in Wisconsin. All our relatives were dairy farmers on my father's side of the family, and my father was a country preacher.

 

I loved the farms of my childhood, the green lush fields, the taste of fresh milk, the fragrance of the cheese sheds, the maple trees, and their syrup, haylofts to play in, all the animals with light in their eyes, and winter sleigh rides wrapped in warm blankets next to grandpa.

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I was six years old when my father joined the US Army as a chaplain and we moved to France. Our family traveled, visiting the great museums and cathedrals throughout Europe. My worldview expanded as we experienced the art and culture of many different countries. To go from the cow barns of Wisconsin to the gold and marble of the Vatican—to see the chiseled veins of Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses was a mind-opening experience for a child and one I still see clearly in my mind today.

 

We returned to the United States when I was close to eleven years old and we lived in North Carolina until the beginning of high school when we moved to the Monterey area in California. I didn’t have much interest in art during these early formative years, for when I would attempt to do art I was never able to achieve what I envisioned, and I would put down the brushes once again dissatisfied. But my relationship with art would completely change when I went to college.

 

I attended Clemson University in 1969 for engineering. Looking at a large-scale model of a bridge one day in the Engineering Department, when I came to the end of the bridge there was a long list of formulas used to build the bridge. The list stretched from near the ceiling almost to the floor in three or four columns. My heart sank. Everything was so predetermined, so “logical.” My spirit ached for something else, a career with fire—for action arising out of a more heartfelt intuition, inspiration, and vision. Architecture came to mind as a possibility. So that day I changed my major. I was fortunate that in the Architecture major Art Studio was a required course.

 

When I walked into my first art studio class I was amazed. Nowhere on campus in the last year had I seen students so inspired and enthusiastic. I could feel it; this was freedom and freedom was what I wanted, no matter what the cost.  This sense of freedom became my guiding star for the rest of my life. Whatever I envisioned I could pursue with total enthusiasm, and, beyond the stages of learning the craft of painting, no one could tell me what was right or wrong.

 

While at Clemson University I married my first wife, Maria.

 

My grade point average the first semester in engineering was a dismal point 8. Coming from a California high school right on the coast my focus had not been on academics as much as on having a good time. I was learning life at the University was very serious and demanding. So I set about to really apply myself. So the next semester my GPA began to improve, rising to an acceptable 3.0,  But I was soon to find out that it did not rise high enough. The draft lottery was instigated and in 1971 I was drafted into the US Army. While I was in basic training at Fort Ord, California, my son, Justin was born. The military decided they could use my skills as an illustrator on the General’s Staff at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and there I stayed until my discharge in 1973.

 

A month before my discharge I met Richard Goetz, a nationally known artist, who was a preeminent colorist and painter. Amazingly, he was teaching a class at the local Community Center where I had signed up for the painting class. He asked if I would like to become an apprentice for him and his wife, Edith. They were going to have their annual summer workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico right after my discharge from the military. The timing was perfect.

 

It was a glorious time in Santa Fe. People came from all over the country to paint the colorful landscapes and light of New Mexico with Richard and to draw the human figure under Edith’s tutelage in the afternoon, inside when the monsoon rains would come. To be a young artist, painting in the high desert of New Mexico felt so exhilarating and romantic.

 

After the summer workshop, we returned to Richard's and Edith's home in Oklahoma City. I was to take care of that place as they continued to their other home in New York. Before departing, Richard said to me that he would make me a nationally known artist within five years. (He had a lot of connections with influence in the art world). I held in my hands the possibility of recognition as well as financial security, what so many artists long for, yet a feeling was gnawing at me that I had much to learn and experience about life. I started to understand that I would have to leave Richard and Edith and find my own way—to discover a deeper core within my being and find my unique visual “voice”—no matter how difficult that road might be. It was after I left that people and events started coming to me of a very different nature—events that started to change my life in emotional and spiritual ways, which in turn led to deeper levels of perception. It was these perceptions that became the cornerstones of my art.

 

I returned to Monterey, California, painting only occasionally since I had a full-time job. I soon separated from my wife, Maria. One day, while meditating my awareness lifted from its body-identified condition to a freer realm, a realm that some call the "spacious Self." This state in itself was not that unfamiliar by now but what followed was. While in this heightened state a glowing round symbol appeared, about 4’ in diameter, made with orangish light and filled with geometric patterns. I was able to read the symbol and what it said was that what I was to contribute during my life was through art. Then the symbol disappeared. I began thinking that I would paint more in the evenings and on the weekends. As I was thinking, this very loud voice in my chest, so loud the bones vibrated, started telling me what to do. So I quit my job and moved to  Santa Barbara and enrolled in the City College there, followed by the University of California, taking art studio and art history classes, painting sometimes eight or ten hours a day, and occasionally more.

 

In 1982 I moved to the foothills of the Sierra Mountains and through 1985 I continued my art education at Chico State University, Chico, California. Over the years my work was displayed in a number of galleries and a couple of museums, but overall, a modest resumé. It was around this time I met and married my second wife, Diana.

 

In 1995, we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I made the important decision in 1996 to pull away from the commercial art scene of galleries, to pursue an exploration into deeper levels of perception, and to discover how that might influence my art. This journey I was about to embark on strengthened the foundation of my art as well as my life. Little did I suspect this journey would eventually extend beyond the next two decades. 

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It was during this time that I found employment doing late afternoon to midnight work as a security officer at the Federal Sites in Santa Fe and a few years later at Los Alamos National Laboratory where I was basically getting paid to be alert and observant. This aligned perfectly with my aim to go into an in-depth study of levels of perception. I would go to very profound levels of awareness during the eight-hour shifts, doing open-eyed, alert, walking meditations. Sometimes on a little pad I carried in my pocket, I would take notes of some of the profound insights, or I would briefly sketch what I was experiencing. I would then often paint my experiences in my studio the following morning or early afternoon before I would have to go to work again.

 

As I went deeper into the study of perception, four main levels of perception started to stand out. They are “The Emanations of Objects,” “The Force of Objects,” “Objects in a Dimension”, and “Objects in the Unified Field.” I started writing out what I discovered about these four levels of perception and incorporating them into this educational website I began developing. I was taken over by a new enthusiasm to create a body of paintings that would express these profound levels of perception.

 

Over time I felt my art website becoming a linchpin—a center from which my creative expressions could radiate out to the world. It felt, again, like a Rubik’s cube revealing a tight, integrated pattern of the many elements of my creative work into one perfect unified whole.

 

I started showing the website with its exercises to other people and I soon realized some people needed a more entertaining/emotional approach to hold their attention. Then the idea came to take many of the same principles in the website and put them into an illustrated fairytale book, so the reader could experience these aspects of perception through the eyes of the protagonist. The book, Toby and the River Is was published in 2016, and it has already won The Nautilus Book Award, The Ben Franklin Award, The Global Ebook Award, and The New Apple Book Award. The Nautilus Award is particularly significant because it is in the Memoir Category, which means they understand that my book is based on actual experience; it is not just a  made-up fairytale.

 

I retired from the Lab in 2015, and in 2016 I went on a road trip through eight western states, doing painting studies to bring back to my new studio that was soon to open up in Santa Fe. The trip extended over weeks, visiting many of the state and national parks. Working my way down the coast from Puget Sound, Washington, I arrived at the coastal area near Mendocino, California and I received a text that my new studio was no longer available. Remarkably, within a matter of hours, a studio place presented itself in Mendocino and the quaint village became my new home.

 

In September of 2017, I started to exhibit my work publicly for the first time since 1996. It started with the Sausalito Art Festival, then the HarmonyUs Festival followed eventually in 2018 by the Edgewater Gallery. It was at the HarmonyUs Festival that my traveling museum exhibit idea was birthed as I mention in the "How This Exhibit Came to Be” section of the Traveling Museum Exhibit on this website. (It appears after the paintings with their quotes.)

 

I opened my Visionary Arts Gallery at 45004 Albion St. #8, Mendocino, California in December of 2022 to present a large part of my Traveling Museum Exhibit to the public. I also wanted the opportunity to speak with others about the physicist’s quotes combined with my paintings and how both point to principles of consciousness and awareness and to hear from people their own experiences of consciousness. The Gallery, in this sense, has been predominately an “educational”/inspirational environment, one that has been enjoyed by many.

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The Gallery has also been offering the community performances by talented musicians, as well as presentations by speakers on a wide variety of subjects. There have been classes in yoga, Thi Chi, and music lessons for children. Sound Healing is offered and the Tibetan Monks have made their large sand-painting mandala in the space.

 

Though it has been an incredibly rich experience, I am now stepping down from the Gallery and my business partner will take over. This will allow me to pursue once again extending the Traveling Exhibit out into the world and allow for more time in the studio. I will, however, be keeping a few of my paintings in the Gallery as an anchor into the community. I am also looking forward to getting back out and doing some more plein-air painting as I explore deep levels of perception in fresh and new ways.

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Thank you for giving your attention to this website. The possibility of offering you something that may inspire you gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction.

 

Micah