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far-from-equilibrium.com
far-from-equilibrium
@far-from-equilibrium.com
520 followers 510 following 580 posts
⏳ back to making visual art after 28yrs away
🎨 posting my own work & reposting others’
©️ all rights reserved 🚫 no AI
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far-from-equilibrium.com
got some #oilpastels today
and played with those for the first
time since the mid-‘90s.

first order of business: Get Well card for an Appalachian artist i appreciate and admire, @oddoblivion.bsky.social
Black oil pastel is layered over teal, then scratched away in somewhat pointillistic style to depict the head and shoulders of a skeletal figure with one hand raised forward holding a bundle of assorted wildflowers in offering. The caption at the top in ghostly lettering says “feel better soon.”
December 7, 2025 at 6:00 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
#wip
for #BlueskyArtShow
6 Dec 2025

finally made progress on the #sky today and it feels like this one is close to finished; it’ll be just my 2nd real-paint-on-canvas #art since the 1990s!

#painting #acrylicpainting #landscape #scape #forest #sunset #river #EastCoastKin #expressionist
An expressionistic landscape featuring a red ribbon of water curving away into the distance in the gorge between two forested mountainsides, under a red sky. Hints of golden light shine in the distance at the horizon where river disappears and the hills meet, and the sky darkens somewhat from blood orange near the horizon rise into a deep crimson at the top of the canvas. The sky is thickly textured with palette-knife painting lending the appearance of splotchy clouds lit from beneath by a setting sun. The hillsides are alive with a multitude of colors: reds, greens, purples, golds, yellows, blues, browns. The colors are applied in thin drizzles and pointillistic splotches against a dark, deeply textured—almost barklike—surface covering both hillsides.
December 7, 2025 at 3:48 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“chiron’s sacrifice”

5 Dec 2025

#art #abstractart #intuitiveart #abstractexpressionist #digitalpainting
#adopteevoices #chiron #bskyart
Abstract expressionist digital painting featuring a central figure composed of a pinkish-peach circular base with what appears to be a shaded hole in the center—the suggestion of a doughnut shape— flanked on the left by a vertical golden rectangle approximately the same height as the donut, and topped with a darker pink, two pronged structure similar to a castle battlement, a horizontal rectangular “wall” with squat, vaguely outlined tower-like structures jutting up from its left and right ends. This central figure is tilted somewhat to the left, apparently floating or sliding on an undulating lilac shaded base that covers the bottom of the frame. The background behind the figure is hazy, shades of pink, peach, gold and light green. A small light pink spherical object approximately the size of the donut hole appears to hover above and to the right of the figure, slightly overlapping the tower-like prong on its upper right.
December 6, 2025 at 12:49 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
quick new #painting for #scape day
and eventually will get back
to doing some year-in-review

been wanting much more art-time
than i’m getting!

5 Dec 2025

#art #digitalart #digitalpainting #landscape #surreal #ForestFriday #EastCoastKin
A portrait oriented landscape painting depicting receding layers of teal shaded mountain ridges under a uniform bright red sky, wherein hangs an irregularly trimmed black circle shape with a smaller irregularly trimmed blue circle shape superimposed over its bottom half, as if the image of an oddly colored sun is splitting in two. A half dozen or so thin black trunks of trees rise in the foreground, with sparse tufts of brightly colored violet and magenta foliage near their tops.
December 6, 2025 at 3:47 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
#artyear cont’d

last ‘big’ painting completed
using the Freeform app—again

it crashed constantly thanks
to the energetic style
(so many scribbles/pixels)

finally after this one it was time
to find a new app

“One Hundred Years”
15 March 2025

#art #cityscape #digitalpainting #TheCure #sunset
Tall portrait oriented cityscape digitally painted in an energetic style using line and ink-marker tools. We are looking at the tops of some skyscrapers against a dramatic sunset. A red orange sun is setting in the J-shaped gap between a lower skyscraper on the left and a higher skyscraper on the right. The buildings themselves are indistinct in silhouette but pick up the red of the sun on the inner edges of the “J” shape where it’s cradled. Concentric circles of red, orange, pink, and gold radiate outward from the sun, filling the sky behind the buildings and darkening toward the top of the canvas into violets and grays. Fluffy cartoon-like clouds appear to follow the arc of these circles as they stretch across the sky in the path of the painting, picking up the golden light from blue and shaded pink and violet above. A small black squarish sign is raised atop an impossibly tall thin post, displaying in glowing green letters the phrase “GOING HOME TIME,” a reference to the lyrics of the Cure song after which the painting is titled.
December 5, 2025 at 12:24 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
time spent #painting, watching them take shape, meditating on a finished product and how it made me feel (better)—it was around this time it crystallized:

viewing, making and sharing #art needed to be a regular part of life again, so i made this account both to facilitate and document the trip
progress photos of one of the last paintings I did in the Freeform app before buying one that could do more and crash less. 5 portrait-oriented panels arranged horizontally depict the stages of development in a landscape scene, strangely colored as if the artist is just starting out again and doesn’t know what he is doing. Red brown mountains in the distance, a yellow moon and starry black sky, green pine trees in the middle of foreground lit with golden auras around their edges in the light of the moon, and a deep blue lake reflecting the mountains and full moon (but for some reason not the trees, stars or black color of the sky). It’s weird and not quite right and I had a wonderful time making it.
December 4, 2025 at 6:25 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
so when 2025 began i’d been
digitally #fingerpainting

(and repeatedly crashing
the Freeform app) for a month

and it took a while to finish

“some body’s home”
7 March 2025

painting this made me feel calm
and i was so happy w/ the results

#digitalpainting #landscape #seascape #arttherapy #artyear
Digital painting of a sunset seascape scene on a portrait oriented canvas. In the foreground on the bottom third of the canvas, a narrow earthen path winds forward through a dark landscape covered with broadleaved shrub-like foliage. The leaves are green but the light of the setting sun casts many in violet and pink shadows. Jutting up from this dark foreground are a few tall palm trees lining the path as it stretches into the distance. They catch the light of the setting sun, which casts a bright aura around the edges of their frond-like fluffy leaves atop thin dark-brown trunks. Past this shadowed foreground, the middle third of the canvas depicts a calm, violet seascape with a few pink highlights on the water. Dark strips of land stretch out from the sides of the canvas into the water and on the nearest of these we can see a small building in silhouette, golden light glowing from its two windows. Another palm tree stands to the left of the building on the same strip of land. The sky occupying the top third of the canvas is hazy and painted in a multitude of shades: pinks, blues, purples, and—closer to the sunset—ambers and greens.
December 4, 2025 at 6:08 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
after scribbling the anxiety out
post-Thanksgiving 2024

i remembered the Freeform app
and started digital-scribbling

did that for a few weeks aimlessly,
until there were so many lines
the app kept crashing

thus a few days after Christmas
was born

“saint kurtis”

29 Dec 2024

#digitalart #artyear
sketch of a head and shoulders figure in profile using a multitude of multicolored lines scribbled energetically throughout the canvas and most heavily in the face and head. The figure is wearing narrow glasses and a fluffy reddish-brown mullet cut. Their complexion is purplish and their shirt is lightly sketched in thin green scribbles. sketch of a head and shoulders figure in profile using a multitude of multicolored lines scribbled energetically throughout the canvas. The figure is wearing narrow glasses and a fluffy reddish-brown mullet cut. Their complexion is purplish and their shirt is a rainbow of thin multicolor scribbles interpenetrating and coalescing around a reddish orange circle of scribbles over the figure’s heart. sketch of a head and shoulders figure in profile using a multitude of multicolored lines scribbled energetically throughout the canvas. The figure is wearing narrow dark sunglasses and a fluffy reddish-brown mullet cut overlaid with loose green scribbles. Their complexion is pinkish-purplish and their shirt is a rainbow of thin multicolor scribbles interpenetrating and coalescing around a reddish orange circle of scribbles over the figure’s heart. Radiant shaky and hasty lines jut out from the figure—a messy aura of red, green, and black scribbled rays—and a single golden yellow ray hovers above the figure’s forehead, angling upward as if their thoughts are sending out light. Echoes of this golden glow paint their cheeks, brow and nose.
December 4, 2025 at 5:01 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
A year’s passed since i came back
to visual #art as way to process
the overwhelming

It started with this #ink scribble
on notebook paper and zapped me

back some 30yrs to the last
time i did this sort of thing habitually

“after thanksgiving”
30 Nov 2024

#expressionist #arttherapy #artyear
A black and white line drawing on a torn piece of notebook paper, displayed against a brick wall in close-up. The scrap of paper is covered in a variety of lines drawn by ballpoint pen: scribbles, scratches, hashes, spikes. These lines converge in the stylized figure of a humanoid head and shoulders, also defined by a variety of energetically drawn lines. The head is bald and in partial profile, with wide exaggerated eyes angled to the side, staring back at the viewer. The nose is little more than a thin line, while the mouth is lost in an aggressive nest of scribbled and hashed lines that emanate out to either side, appearing to extend into the air around the jaw. The neck is thin and angled forward as if the head is peering around a corner or lurching forward under a weight. The overall appearance suggests emaciation or a skeletal, non-human creature of fantasy. The same drawing as described in the previous photo. This picture is taken closer, with the lens positioned up against the paper at the base of the subject’s neck. The effect is to stretch the image upward, heightening its uncanniness and accentuating the aggressive energy of the scribbles up close to the camera lens.
December 4, 2025 at 3:54 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“interface”

2 Dec 2025

#abstractart #digitalpainting #art #abstractexpressionist #quickpainting #intuitivepainting
On a landscape oriented canvas, large areas of color are developed in broad digital oil brush strokes. An irregular teal and blue shape in the center of the canvas is bordered by blazes of red, yellow and magenta at its edges, blending into to a generally red and maroon background.
December 2, 2025 at 10:19 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
real-paint #wip for #ForestFriday

4”x4” #acrylicpainting on canvas w/synthetic brushes, bamboo skewers and a tiny flathead screwdriver

no clear plans yet for the large red areas, may find out along the way

#scape #EastCoastKin #bskyart #art #painting #expressionism #abstractart #humanartist
small unfinished painting which appears to be a landscape, depicting two forested hillsides divided by a red ribbon of water or road that recedes and narrows into the distance, curving away behind the hill to the right. The sky area is also bright red with a hint of some yellow shading near the spot where the hillsides meet, the vanishing point. The hillsides themselves are alive with vibrant splatters of color evoking autumns changes: greens, yellows, reds, purples, browns and blacks all applied in small thin strokes and spatters over a rough, bark-like undertexture that spreads across the hillside areas of the painting only. The sky and red ribbon also show signs of some texture-building: cloudlike arcs above and wavelike lines below.
November 28, 2025 at 2:08 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“cloudy night”

22 Nov 2025

#art #digitalart #abstractart #digitalpainting
A very tall portrait oriented canvas covered in a foreground layer of dark violet cloud-like shapes, behind which a mostly blue background is shot through with pink and peach streaks like the colors of a night sky. Yellow green accents sprayed across the canvas complete the palette, and a large yellow green circle—partly obscured by pieces of these other features—occupies the upper right center of the canvas.
November 22, 2025 at 6:53 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“dancing”

21 Nov 2025

#abstractart #art #digitalart
colorful portrait-oriented abstract canvas featuring a bright green and orange angular patchwork background hashed over with parallel diagonal black lines, and a foreground figure also outlined in black but made up of a variety of other colors in similar angular patchwork: cornflower, cobalt and ultramarine blue, pink and plum, red and yellow. The figure is difficult to interpret. It appears to have a squat conical top and squat cylindrical middle, plus two dangling or swinging appendages positioned below, best described as irregular rectangles. The lines and vibrant colors suggest motion and activity.
November 22, 2025 at 2:00 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“world-eater”

(this quick impromptu painting is too tall)

21 Nov 2025

#abstractart #art #digitalart #digitalpainting #abstractexpressionist
tall, narrow portrait-oriented canvas featuring bright colors applied and smudged in energetic strokes. A neon-yellow-green foreground of squat triangular peaks gives way to a smeared middle ground and background of bright magenta and orange with sparse violet shadows. Looming or lurking against this background is an elongated egg-shaped figure painted in smeared and swirled violet and green strokes, its somewhat inscrutable contours and features picking up and blending into the colors of the background.
November 21, 2025 at 2:49 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
finally got back to this #wip
using real paint on canvas today

it’s a #landscape

#art #abstract #expressionist #acrylicpainting #texture
square panel close-up of an acrylic paint work-in-progress featuring bright red, orange, yellow, and violet streaks, splotches and thin filaments over a bark-textured forest green background. There is a hint of bright red-orange at the top center of the canvas, an oblique triangular wedge of red-orange“sky” between the arcs of the two converging forest-green “mountains” splattered with texture and color.
November 19, 2025 at 5:53 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“blending in”

19 Nov 2025

living 45yrs as the #adoptee
in a closed adoption before
meeting genetic relatives made
for some powerful unblending in
the 8yrs since

#bskyart #art #abstractart #abstractexpressionist #digitalpainting #humanartist #arttherapy #identitycrisis #boundaries #adopteevoices
Portrait oriented canvas painted in smooth, curving expressionistic strokes. There is the suggestion of a dominant foreground figure composed of a head and shoulders—a 3/4 view portrait with the subject’s left shoulder turned forward—but this general silhouette does not easily resolve into clear facial and body features. The head or face portion is a central swirl of several colors: a green/gold face or head with violet, blue, and magenta strokes surrounding and interpenetrating it to create the illusion of contours or shadowed features. Below this, the shoulder and chest portions are bright blue-green and gold at the shoulder turned forward, and darkening to shades of denim and blue-green algae in the chest area that below the abstract head or face. The background in the left upper frame is filled with more of these dark tones interspersed with smooth arcing strokes of gray-black, whereas on the right are bright strokes of magenta and peach suggesting a light source from this side, further emphasized by the position of the violet strokes and magenta highlights across the left sides of the figure and the darker left side of the canvas cast in shadowed tones.
November 19, 2025 at 1:38 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
got this quick expressionistic
#landscape sketch out
of a spare 39 minutes today

14 Nov 2025

#art #digitalpainting #expressionist
Simple expressionistic landscape featuring smooth ground and a horizon ridgeline contoured in yellow and golden tones with violet shadows. There’s the blurred suggestion of blue green foliage in the left foreground, and a bright magenta tree with olive streaked shadows rising beyond the ridgeline ahead against a light blue sky.
November 14, 2025 at 7:56 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
“in a dark room i disintegrate”

13 Nov 2025

since late diagnosis i don’t view
this pattern of ghosting
overstimulating spaces as a mark

of shame or incompetence—

it’s a pro-technique to maintain
competence: decomposing
and recomposing to meet each
moment

#art #abstractart #abstractexpressionist
abstract expressionist painting on a portrait oriented canvas. A plum colored background is washed over with burnt orange tones, allowing patches of the background to peek out in plum and magenta hued highlights from behind. On top of this in the center is an abstract expressionistic figure with a fairly indecipherable shape, painted in a single stroke in bright yellow, quite rough and diffuse. The figure appears to be further smudged at its edges, disintegrating into the background as if emerging from or becoming part of it.
November 13, 2025 at 1:42 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
#art time remains scarce
but w/ a #digitalpainting app
in my pocket there are many
opportunities for a 5-minute #sketch

thinking about how to make this
less digital and phone-dependent:
how to always have a miniature
analog art kit close at hand
to cultivate brief creative bursts 🤔

#abstractart
Simplify five minute abstract sketch on a square canvas. The base is a hazy wash of cobalt blue on a light background. The center of the canvas is a similarly hazy roughly painted yellow circle that stretches to the edges of the frame and goes over on three of the four sides. Overlapping the more blue/violet-tinged background, the yellow is dulled somewhat. Painted across the yellow circle and overlapping one another slightly are four other shapes: at the top left, a rough pink circle; and then descending diagonally downward and to the right across the frame, three successive overlapping diagonal paint strokes. Touching the pink circle is a large burnt-orange diagonal stroke, then diagonally below this a smaller muted violet diagonal stroke, and finally overlapping with that, a small lime green diagonal stroke.
November 13, 2025 at 1:17 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
30sec #time-lapse
of 90min #painting process

#digitalpainting #art #quickpainting #sketchbook
November 10, 2025 at 3:10 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
time for #art remains scarce but i keep fiddling around, trying to extend the learning curve—ebbs and flows

#sketchbook #expressionism #landscape #digitalpainting #surreal
simple expressionistic landscape on a portrait oriented canvas with a mauve and beige treetrunk covering the left side of the frame, a single branch extending out and down to the right, splitting into multiple tributary branches that spread out across the bottom half of the frame. In the distance behind these branches are a succession of purple mountain ranges gradating lighter in color with distance: dark at the bottom/front and gradating to a light violet toward the top of the canvas. The sky is orange at the horizon and yellow above. Studding the horizon line at the edges are the silhouettes of thin irregular tower-like structures, and at the center a large half-arc of black and gray like the top half of a dark egg peeking over the horizon line.
November 10, 2025 at 2:08 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
the resource-bar for #art has
been low for a week or so,

but i’m trying to get back
to this #wip in real paint

and put some colors
on top of the textures

#acrylicpainting
Close-up black-and-white photo in landscape orientation of a painting in progress, showing many raised textures evocative of organic surfaces like skin, scales, branches and mud.
November 6, 2025 at 6:00 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
spent an hour at a crowded and noisy gathering under too much stimulation, digital painted my way through it

a simple and quick #cityscape was the result

#art #artsky #digitalart #digitalpainting #abstractart #bskyart #quickpainting #arttherapy
A simple featureless abstract/figurative portrait oriented cityscape: a black ribbon of road proceeding from the bottom of the canvas and narrowing toward the middle, finally arcing away and disappearing to the right, bordered by gray sidewalks and flanked on both sides by tall colorful buildings in blue, yellow, pink, and green. The sky is peach at the horizon, darkening upward to magenta and finally violet at the top of the canvas. *reposted due to error in original post
November 2, 2025 at 1:56 AM
far-from-equilibrium.com
Lake Stephens, WV

31 Oct 2025 - iPhone 16Pro

#landscape #digitalphotography #ForestFriday #EastCoastKin #nature #lake #Appalachia
Lakeside view with pale autumn grass in the foreground, a mirrored-surface lake in the middle ground, and across the lake, forested banks showing the many colors of autumn in Appalachia. The sky is full of fluffy clouds.
October 31, 2025 at 10:35 PM
far-from-equilibrium.com
Turkey Spur Overlook
Grandview, New River Gorge

31 Oct 2025 - iPhone 16Pro

#landscape #nature #EastCoastKin #ForestFriday #NewRiverGorge #Appalachia #digitalphotography #river #mountains
Overlook view of the New River Gorge at Grandview, a crescent shaped arc of mirror-like river occupying the bottom right corner of the portrait oriented image while the bottom left is full of foreground foliage, bright red leaves and seeds of a seasonal plant standing out sharply against the emerald green spruce needles of the tree behind it. In the distance surrounding the river are the sunlit-and-shadowed mountainsides of the gorge, bejeweled in autumn colors but somewhat darkened under a sky full of fluffy white cumulus clouds.
October 31, 2025 at 8:04 PM