There are certain qualities I try to achieve in my paintings. First and foremost is to release images from my imagination. Every painting design comes from some quirky interior burst or blip of imagination, some image that I just have to paint to see how it looks outside my fevered brain. In the Strange Visions gallery are many such pictures that are just that: my strange, imaginary visions.
My painting designs are direct, usually focusing on one or two central figures, painted somewhat realistically. At the same time, the central figure typically exists in an imaginary landscape that enables an acute perception of its local psychic environment, such that the scene is complete and compelling. This approach could be called ‘psychological’ in that it explores the relationships between the deep mind and our modern visual sense.
Like standing on the threshold of a door to a spirit world, from many years of travels and exposure to third world cultures I find myself yearning to unveil the universal archetypes underlying sacred visions, on one hand, and material cultures on the other. In these paintings the mysteries of the present can fuse with those of the deep past of our human experience.
In some cases, such as the Seven Shamans series in the Spirits and Shamans gallery, the imagery derives from a kind of surrealist experiment in automatic drawing. From a place of deep relaxation I let imagery flood my primal consciousness, gradually allowing one image to come into focus over the others. Eyes closed, I let my pencil try to capture the reality of this image as it rapidly sketches it onto paper. Many such drawings end in a chaos of confusing lines, but sometimes one will burst forth in a form that can be realized in paint, containing an obvious power I want to depict as realistically as possible, despite the clearly ‘unreal’ nature of it. From this process, one might discern both mythological and spiritual elements. I make no attempt to force a conceptual structure on the image, such as life or death or survival or destruction; my images can best be appreciated as psychologically-charged bubbles of consciousness, even perhaps artifacts of ‘absurdity’ in the most surrealist sense.
Then, I attempt to breathe life into the idea, something that makes the image come alive in the viewer’s mind. I believe that our subconscious speaks to us in specific images. Sometimes I feel almost like a psychic medium, downloading images from an alternate dimension onto the canvas. The pictures develop like a photo in a darkroom, emerging bit by bit from the basic design into a unified whole. Often, I have a crisis of sorts about three-quarters of the way to completion: I struggle, it’s not working, I think. But then, as I keep at it, the picture suddenly comes into focus. I know I’m done when the picture releases me to move on. It’s exhausting and maybe dangerous to be ruled, even temporarily, by another dimension.
But what’s in it for you? I want my paintings to be interesting, to grab you. A successful painting seizes your eye and takes you for a journey. It forcibly directs your vision around the canvas, stopping here and there, with different things revealing themselves at different times. You keep coming back until it allows you, temporarily, to catch your breath. If I can create a painting that does all that, I’m happy. If any painting is just passively absorbing your gaze and not giving anything back, to me it’s a dud.
I usually start with a simple pencil sketch design. The colors are never part of the design - each picture generates its own color palette as I paint. Using traditional oil painting techniques I underpaint everything, building up a basic color spectrum. Then I layer over and over. I let the color take over the painting naturally, never forcing it. I know that a painting will eventually take on a life of its own. If I try to exert too much control, the picture fights back and goes sour. So I let it run. Sometimes an image appears and simply won’t be denied. It demands to join the painting, even if it means a lot of re-work. Coco Got Loose was like that - I had the rug, the guitars, and what seemed like a finished picture. Then Coco the crocodile appeared and had to be included.
There are a thousand painters I admire, a hundred I love, and a few that just plain knock me out. Rembrandt, for example. Have you ever stood in front of his pair of oval “pendant” portraits of an elderly Dutch couple in the Met? I can stand there, staring at them, absorbing their weird, compelling communication until my feet get sore and the guards are getting nervous. What about Goya! But there is just one whom I’d really, really want to be (art-wise, that is) if I could be one painter: Henri Rousseau.
“The artist is not a person endowed with free will, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. …The creative process ….consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. …The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious.”
--Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature
Charles Lewis Biography
I started painting in kindergarten. Finger painting was just the best. All those gaudy colors, the cool, slimy feel of the paints, the pure freedom of it all.
When I was maybe ten I got a paint-by-numbers kit for Christmas from a spinster “aunt” who worked in a local department store. I was so excited I could hardly make it through the interminable Christmas dinner. After the food, I took my shiny new paint kit to my room to check it out. There were three little canvas-covered boards, with lines showing where the paint should go and numbers showing what paint to use. This was the real deal – this was oil paint, liked real painters used! I chose the picture of a horse in a pasture.
Then…. yuck! The colors they wanted me to use were ghastly: brown, olive green, and other turgid tones. But wait! There were other colors in the box. I decided to make the horse bright red. I tried to stay in the lines suggested for each color, but I quickly abandoned that and started smushing different colors together, more or less within the general outline of the horse. Wow! I discovered I could make a jazzy green by mixing some taxicab yellow and blue. The red on the horse looked better with a little white mixed in. I tried shading some shadows. Yeah, I thought, this could be fun.
I kept at it, although I was more consumed by being a kid. One night when I was about thirteen I woke up, hot and sweaty in the Denver summer, and noticed that my bedroom’s closet door was blank. White. Like a canvas or a panel. The next day I found a can of black enamel in the garage and started thinking about a design. I was captivated by the heroic characters in the mythology books I was reading, so I did my first interior decorating job. The large monster I painted on the door didn’t thrill my parents. I wish I had a picture of it now - in my memory it was magnificent.
When I was in college I decided to take a painting class – the only art class I ever took after elementary school. The painting studio was wonderful, with beautiful cool light and the intoxicating smells of linseed oil and turp. Not to mention that the teacher was a cute young Englishwoman, bubbly and bright and probably just fresh out of grad school. I grabbed an easel near the back of the room and somebody showed me how to stretch a canvas and prime it. I had a sketch to work from, and I took infinite pains shading the different parts of the design. I found that I had patience for the painting process and a feeling for the end result that kept me gnawing at it until I felt it was done.
For quite a few years after college, life got in the way of painting. I never stopped, but I put it on the back burner. I spent the next decade living and traveling throughout Europe, Asia and South America. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, I helped remote northern Thai villagers build water systems and bridges. Later, I worked as a construction laborer, surveyor, house painter, building inspector, soil tester on drilling boats in the North Sea, and freelance writer. Since my childhood in Colorado I’ve loved the mountains and have traveled to Nepal many times to unwind on long Himalayan treks.
I’ve always loved folk art. I'm attracted to handmade things that reflect a culture, whether it's an antique oriental rug from central Asia, American folk art from the Amish country or carved figures from South America or India. Folk art has a timeless quality that I love. Folk art objects play a dramatic role in some of the Toy Portraits paintings. There is a wonderful circular quality about painting an object or toy someone made by hand. The older the object, the more it seems to breathe when painted on canvas. The challenge is to animate the object, bring it alive, make it leap off the canvas and burrow inside your mind. But I never just make a painted copy. The colors, the expressions and the strange essence of the thing itself are always my own.
My itch to paint breaks out when the sun goes down. I love daylight and the outdoors. I drink up color like a sponge. But my art brain kicks in after dark. I paint at night. All kinds of things happen under those bright lights in my studio.
Unauthorized Bigraphy
Jupiter7 came to earth from Jupiter7, a dimension he says, right next to ours. According to him, he landed on earth a few years ago. Here people sometimes call him Charlie. Here's what he said about himself.
"When I landed here – earth, that is – I felt pretty much right at home. You know, like you feel when you land in some foreign country that just suits you. Sure, things are different, but they are okay. You can deal."
"I landed down in Chaco Canyon, this jive scene you call New Mexico. At exactly midnight. Earthtime. I was five years old – in Jupiter7 years, that is. We don't age at the same rate as earth people. I'm nine years old now. We only live to 20. Then we pass on to Jupiter8. We don't know too much about Jupiter8. There aren't many backvisits from there. Ghost Prophets, and so on. Likewise Jupiters One through Six. There are legends about them. "
"You are probably curious about Jupiter7. You aren't? That's normal. Earth people aren't very curious, are they? There is so much they don't want to know about. I'll tell you a few things anyway, since you asked. Or did you? Sometimes my hearing is fuzzy. I speak all earth languages. That can be confusing."
The following is excerpted from a recent interview:
Q: Where is Jupiter7?
A: It's right next to earth, dimension-wise.
Q: Like another planet?
A: It's not a different place or thing. It's a different dimension from this one. It's a different version of earth, maybe.
Q: Are some things the same as earth on Jupiter7?
A: Some things appear the same. Only they aren't. They diverge from what's on earth.
Q: How did you get here?
A: It's hard to explain without a detailed understanding of complex inter-dimensional geometries.
Q: Why are you here?
A: I'm a kooky guy.
Q: Were you chosen to come here or something?
A: Or something.
Q: How long did it take to get from Jupiter7 to earth??
A: A little less than a picosecond. It's not a long trip.
Q: What do you do here?
A: I import images from Jupiter7. I hang out. I travel.
Q: Can you travel back and forth to Jupiter7?
A: In theory. I haven't been back. There are some other Jupiter7 citizens here, too. I see them sometimes. There aren't many. Earth isn't for everyone, you know.
Q: Do tourists come from Jupiter7 to earth?
A: No. Maybe someday, but I doubt it. Earth is a bit strange for tourists.
Q: What's the weather like on Jupiter7?
A: It's always good. All weather is good weather.
Q: Does everyone from Jupiter7 look like you?
A: Here on earth you think we look like you. Don't we? On Jupiter7 we look like us.
Q: Is there anything you don't understand about earth?
A: People are hard to understand. Some Buddhas come to live on Jupiter7 after they stop being people. I can understand them. Money I don't understand. I don't understand violence. Politics. War.
Q: Is there money on Jupiter7?
A: No. Your money idea is a very strange concept. Living to get money is hard to figure out.
Q: Do you watch TV?
A: Can't do it. Recorded existence scrambles my brainwaves.
Q: Is Jupiter7 perfect?
A: What's the phrase you use. . . "Are you shitting me?"
Q: Are there animals on Jupiter7?
A: Oh yes, many, many animals. And many, many toys. There is no duality of alive or not-alive. Everything is. Animals, toys, rocks, plants, the sky. Everything. Some things simply choose not to interact with other things very much or do it on frequencies you can't intercept.
Q: Are there any Jupiter7 animals on earth?
A: We sent some. The ringtailed duckwallah is a Jupiter7 animal, for example.
Q: Do they have music on Jupiter7?
A: We have musician animals. Some live in the sea, like whales. You can hear their songs everywhere. Most flying animals are musicians. They sing all the time. Like birds here.
Q: Are there machines on Jupiter7? Do you have computers? TV?
A: No machines. When I first got here, earthwise, I tried to deal with machines. It's strange how people love their machines. We don't have computers on Jupiter7. No TV. No phones. No cars.
Q: Can earth people or animals go to Jupiter7?
A: We do have some earth animals. Animals are full citizens. There are quite a few cats. Elephants. Whales. Gorillas. Others too. Some humans come to Jupiter7. You call them Buddhas or Boddhisatvas, and other names. They get there somehow.
Q: You have religions on Jupiter7?
A: Sure. Not like here, though. Religions express value for other living things. Since everything is alive, religions celebrate everything. Temples are happy places, kind of like zoos but without the cages.
Q: How do you get your Jupiter7 images to earth?
A: I get regular transmissions from Jupiter7. Then I have to paint them.
Q: Are they some kind of joke?
A: Pretty much. We like to joke around.
Q: What do you do with the images?
A: People take them home. They show different things than here.
Q: How many pictures do you paint a year?
A: It depends on the transmission quality of the images I get from Jupiter7. Sometimes it isn't so good and I have to interpret a lot or wait for a new transmission. Lately the transmissions have been slow so I'm painting Jupiter7 scenes from my own memory. It's difficult to translate Jupiter7 colors into earth colors. We have wavelengths people can't see here. Also I don't paint very fast. I paint a couple dozen a year if I'm not traveling a lot.
Q: Would you mind commenting on a few of your pictures?
A: I'll try.
Q: This one you title The Relatives.
A: Everyone on Jupiter7 is related, so everyone is our relative. My relatives sent me this image. It's not really them, but it's the best I can do, considering. It shows a holiday on Jupiter7. All we have for time is holidays. I am struggling to understand the concept of work. It makes no sense so far. We hang around a lot.
Q: Winged Boddhisatva series?
A: I met some winged Boddhisatvas just before I came here. I painted them from memory. You see them now and then on Jupiter7. I haven't ever seen one here.
Q: What about the Strawberry Pixies?
A: Pixies are frequently sighted on Jupiter7 but nobody really knows where they live. Pixies just appear and disappear. Maybe they come from another dimension. They don't speak any known language, so nobody can talk to them, and they don't seem to want to talk. They come here too, but not often.
Q: Nuclear Family?
A: I got a message asking me to look for a relative that came over a few years ago. They never heard back. This is a family portrait they gave me to give to their relative. I haven't found their relative yet. If I do, I'll give him the picture.
Q: Where do you live, here on earth?
A: I hang in Montana. It's more like Jupiter7 than most places. The Jupiter7 transmissions come through pretty clear most of the time there.
Q: Thanks for the update. Mister, uhhh. . . . .? Do you have more than one name?
A: My name is Jupiter7. We all have the same name. You can call me Charlie if it makes things easier.