TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Announcing the New Book

Pre-order your copy of Michael Divine's new book
"Persuing the Ineffable: The Artwork of Michael Divine."

Pre-Order Your Book

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Limited Edition Canvas Prints

Archival signed and numbered canvas prints
in bold beautiful colors.

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TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Murals

We've created some breathtaking murals
around the world. View the portfolio for more.

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TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Paintings

Looking to add an original painting to your collection?
Visit the gallery of available original artwork.

ORIGINAL ART

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Installation Art

Burning Man • Stage design • Experiential installations.
We've built some pretty epic spaces over the years.

VIEW INSTALLATIONS

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Live Art • Presentations • Performance

Want us to come to your event? We've live painted on stage, given presentations about art and culture, and more.

REACH OUT

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Teaching and Mentorship

Want to study with Michael & Violet Divine?
Find out about upcoming mentorship programs and art workshops here.

LEARN WITH US

Michael Divine

Explore Michael Divine’s creative world through his paintings, drawings, writings, and more here:

MichaelDivine.com

Violet Divine

Paintings, photography, creative projects, and writing. Visit her site here:

VioletDivine.com

Follow us on Instagram: @michael_divine + @ultraviolet55

michael_divine

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Mar 23

Open

If I Concentrate, I Can Hear the Heartbeat of the Earth
Acrylic/Canvas
12" x 16"

Sold

#concentrate #heartbeat #earth #childspose #meditation #breath

michael_divine

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Mar 20

Open

From the Forge
Acrylic/Canvas
24" x 18"

Something for your week.

#visionaryart #contemporary #phoenix

michael_divine

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Mar 17

Open

A Wake in a River
Acrylic/Linen
16 x 12

Available. Pm for details

#river #wake #art #paintingoftheday #visionaryart #visions #painting #acrylic

michael_divine

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Mar 15

Open

Our Lady of Patience
(or A Woman Listening to a Man Explain Her Area of Expertise to Her)
Acrylic/Linen
12" x 9"

(Available. PM for details)

#ourladyofpatience #patience #woman #saint #holy

michael_divine

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Mar 13

Open

21 years ago I registered the domain name TenThousandVisions.com (yes last year it would have been 20 which is a bigger deal in base-10 cultures) Although, to be fair, a friend who I was staying with on Kauai at the time registered it for me.*

"The web is the future, Michael. You need a website.”
And he asked me what the domain name should be.

I'd read once of the ten thousand emanations of the buddha - the pure being of every point rippling outwards creating our reality. There was also a line in Be Here Now (which I'd read maybe 6 years earlier) that’d stuck with me:

The potter becomes his pot.
Embrace the ten thousand beautiful visions
Become 1
with the universe

Be the Ten Thousand Beautiful Visions.

Which was a little long for a URL.
So TenThousandVisions.com was born.

It seemed to just embrace everything I could ever create. There’s no higher or lower. There’s no one type of art or another. We are simply here experiencing all of it.

21 years and a thousand website redesigns later (o those shameful early drag-n-drop wysiwig days), I’ve never doubted that choice. And it turns out that my friend was right: the web WAS the future.

(See yesterday's post for the page from Be Here Now)

#art #artsale #anniversary #beherenow #ramdass #visions #tenthousandvisions #beautiful #visionaryart #modernart #contemporary #fire #kauai #url #website

michael_divine

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Mar 13

Open

**DEAR ARTISTS**
Two NFT Art Scams for artists to be aware of:

So @Stevenorman2888 or @WebbCole8 or someone with a similar name writes to you on IG. They look legit. They have like 2k followers. Their bio says they buy NFT art.

“Hi,” They say, "I’d like to buy your art as NFTs! You can keep the art! I just want the NFT!”

Cool, you say. Great.

They say "I want these 3 pieces! Go to this site and register! This is where I buy all my NFTs!”

You go to a site that, at the outset looks legit.

In order to mint an NFT on it tho you have to create an account and grant it access to your MetaMask Wallet.
Then BAM. It drains your wallet as part of the permissions you granted it.
Or it drops an NFT in your wallet that, when you interact with it, drains your wallet.

In any case: just. dont.

I dug more deeply into one of these sites. One was just cloned from an NFT marketplace site template with very little changed. Clicking around just brought up a bunch AI generated and place holder images.

The next scam goes like this:
Someone writes to you on IG. Everything is the same as before
.
“Hi,” They say, "I’d like to buy your art as NFTs! You can keep the art! I just want the NFT!”

Cool, you say. Great.

“I want these 3 pieces. Go to Opensea.io and register! This is where I buy all my NFTs!”

Open Sea is a legit NFT marketplace. So you’re like OK and you do it.

“Ah!" they say “I tried making payments twice but not going through.. kindly contact the live support Below to find out the reason I can’t purchase your works”

They send looks like an email from Opensea.io help showing a transaction hash and block confirmation (why there’d be a transaction hash if the transaction didn’t go through I don’t know). Use google lens to copy the text and then searth Etherscan for the hash: you’ll find that it doesn’t exist.

"Please contact Open Sea help to find out why!" they ask and provide you with an email address opensea.iohelpdeskcenter(at)gmail.com

All opensea.io emails come from opensea.

Anyways they you probably go to that and grant someone some permission and next thing you know, BAM your wallet is empty.

Anyways, leeches gonna leech. (see comments for the rest)

michael_divine

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Mar 12

Open

It’s a 21st Anniversary Flash Sale - 21YEARS (discount code)

I missed it last year but 21 years ago I registered the domain name TenThousandVisions.com (yes last year it would have been 20 which is a bigger deal in base-10 cultures) Although, to be fair, a friend who I was staying with on Kauai at the time registered it for me.*

"The web is the future, Michael. You need a website.”
And he asked me what the domain name should be.

I'd read once of the ten thousand emanations of the buddha - the pure being of every point rippling outwards creating our reality. There was also a line in Be Here Now (which I'd read maybe 6 years earlier) that’d stuck with me:

The potter becomes his pot.
Embrace the ten thousand beautiful visions
Become 1
with the universe

Be the Ten Thousand Beautiful Visions.

Which was a little long for a URL.
So TenThousandVisions.com was born.

It seemed to just embrace everything I could ever create. There’s no higher or lower. There’s no one type of art or another. We are simply here experiencing all of it.

21 years and a thousand website redesigns later (o those shameful early drag-n-drop wysiwig days), I’ve never doubted that choice. And it turns out that my friend was right: the web WAS the future.

If you made it this far, here’s a 21% discount code for prints on TenThousandVisions.com/Shop - 21YEARS

Good for today and tomorrow.

*I was at the time just floating around with a backpack. I’d spent a month in the Kalalau Valley and, well… adventures and stories for other days…

#art #artsale #anniversary #beherenow #ramdass #visions #tenthousandvisions #beautiful #visionaryart #modernart #contemporary #fire #kauai #url #website

michael_divine

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Mar 10

Open

On the easel....a little work in progress. 12x16. Acrylic/linen

#wip #landscapepainting #painting #landscape #acrylic

michael_divine

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Mar 8

Open

"The Birth of Venus"
and
"Determination"

Acrylic/Canvas
24x36 each

#thebirthofvenus #venus #determination #fire #woman #women

michael_divine

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Mar 7

Open

This is part of a 12x16 canvas. One of the things I love about small paintings like this is the efficiency that one has to have in the details. Each little brushstroke can convey the entire meaning of a piece or part of it. A big painting, a painting of the same subject matter but quite large, would have far more layers and brush strokes (obviously). It's a lot more time to get that one little piece in a big painting... That one little piece that might be 6 inches instead of the little quarter inch that it is here. And so here there's just a dollop, a dash, and so on. It's good practice because it trains you to pay attention to the movement, the layering, the way the paint sits on the brush and when you move back to the big painting there's more efficiency to your work and the bigger pieces find their form much more quickly.

An addendum: I just want to add that the concept of efficiency here isn't so that you can paint faster paintings. Or more of them. It's so that you can find a more efficient expression of your own creativity. So that the feeling comes out in each brushstroke.

#workinprogress #wip #paintingtechniques #painting

michael_divine

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Mar 1

Open

Work in progress detail
Acrylic/canvas
9" x 12" section of a 50" x 40" painting

#acrylicpainting #acrylic #wip #workinprogress #art #visionaryart #contemporaryart #modernart

michael_divine

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Feb 28

Open

Parsifly
Acrylic/canvas
5" x 7"

Available

michael_divine

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Feb 27

Open

Something from the sketchbook. I've used a
@pilotpenusa v5 pen and 5x8 @strathmoreart sketchbook for over 20 years.

#pen #ink #drawing

michael_divine

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Feb 25

Open

(Title Unremembered)
(something about dreams) :P

Acrylic/Panel
12" x 14"

michael_divine

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Feb 23

Open

Before the Crash (Triptych)
Acrylic/Canvas
54" x 72" total on 3 separate canvases

I painted this last winter/spring. There can be remarkable moments amidst the chaos of the world. The sunset shortly before an impending storm can be truly incredible as the one star that guides our path fades from view.

These paintings will, of course, be in the book. This and "Samadhi" were the final two big paintings to make it in before I started down new creative roads and narratives.

May you find your own stars to light your way and may you be the stars for others finding their way in the darkness.

#sunset #sunsetpainting #crash #landscape #landscapepainting #contemporaryart #black #void #existential #dread

michael_divine

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Feb 22

Open

Just Waltzing Through the World Trying to Keep it All Together
Acrylic/Canvas
14" x 12"

#waltz #keepittogether #painting #surreal #sun #landscape #lol

michael_divine

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Feb 21

Open

It's an older painting, but it checks out...

There is Yet Enough Time to Take Another Path
Acrylic/Canvas
48" x 32"
2006
(that's a whopping 17 years ago!)

* and one of those rare earlier paintings that is available.

Painted after some time in Belize, Guatemala, and Yucatan area of Mexico.

#guatemala #mexico #painting #art #patterns #streetside #colors #contemporaryart

michael_divine

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Feb 17

Open

Part 2: ...but it’s a track that I got on a very early age. It was like a thread of a marvelous tapestry that I found that continually unravelled and wove back together again and it constantly leads my work towards new vistas and inventions, to new understandings of myself and my relationship to the world.

If someone feels they can feed my work into a database and then output new ideas based on that – DURR DURR Look at me I’m the artist now – then they really don’t get what it’s about.

If you need to comment here on why AI is the future and your AI outputs are so cutting edge and revolutionary and why I’m some old luddite stuck in the muck, I frankly do not care. The magic of an original work of art – with the time and energy – the deep unsettling self doubts or existential dreads and loneliness and heartache and the glorious joyful moments when it feels like my brush is the breeze and I am just a cloud and we are all just unfolding together in this dance – that connection and vulnerability and the work that comes from it – that’s what my real output is. That’s the real story. It’s not just a picture, but a story of the processing of this human experience.

I’m not going to say that no computer can ever replicate that but even that idea – “replicate” – is weird. The computer will tell you a computer story based on the human stories. But a human story: a human story is based on me at 3rd grade. And that time I was 23. That moment when I really got it. And that moment it all fell apart. it is how I felt when I read the news this morning and how I felt when the crisp morning air filled my lungs while I held a hot cup of tea in my hand.

I am at an age where I really don’t have to care if a computer can or will replicate any of that. Yes, old man of 46 that I am, I will happily keep painting til I die because that’s the story I’m writing. A story of sketchbooks and considerations of the angle of light on the corner of a building. A story of a human with open hearted fantasies, middle of the road mediocrities, messy addictions, and idealist visions.

Now, back to working on Book 3.

Art for pts 1+2: The Glass Onion
Acrylic/Canvas
54" x 36"

#aiart #byhand #paint

michael_divine

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Feb 17

Open

Part 1: People who have said to me, “Michael, you REALLY need to check out AI. You could use it for painting ideas!”

Here’s the thing: if you’ve known me and my art for a while (or even not for a while) then you’ve gotten the sense that the paintings from from my impressions of the world. I’m constantly taking it in, assimilating it, using it as part of my own personal journey and process, etc. And by ‘the world’ I mean all of it – from the big picture politics to the fine facets of my own interpersonal relationships, from those awesome James Webb Telescope pictures to the flowers outside in the garden and the birds that flit from branch to branch.

When someone asks me – hey where did the idea for this painting or that painting come from? and I tell them a story of personal introspection, there’s a sense of commonality because the asker, the viewer, often shares those feeling or sensations. They see the unfolding of the whole process and want to go on that journey as well. I think the archetypal experience triggers something in a kind of conversation that is beyond words. That process, over many years, has imbued an authenticity to the experience of the painting and suggests something of the possibilities of this human experience and expression.

If I said to you: ‘well I plugged some variables into a computer and then painted the one I liked best’ well, there’s a different sense of it. I’ve removed part of myself and my experience from the process. I let the computer define for me what the human experience looks like based on all of the other human experiences that have been fed into it. If we are missing part of that experience, it’s not MY blinders, it’s the computers. If I seem to have cribbed it from one person but not another, it’s – again – not my fault. It’s the computer and its own limitations.

But if I miss it in my own explorations, then they are MY limitations. And therein is real growth.

I’ve used the same style 5.5×8 strathmore sketchbook for 30 years – and that’s the process. An idea jotted down here. A flower unfolding there. A dash of lightning. A whole unified vision. TBH this mind of mine has one track but... (continued in the next post.)

michael_divine

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Feb 16

Open

Our histories make us. They define us. Just as the rivers carve our canyons and winds shape mountains, the oceans we inhabit are fed by countless tributaries stretching backwards through time. If we find poison in the Gulf of Mexico (and certainly that’s not too hard) we could search back through the streams that led there and find from where it came. If we find that there is poison in the ocean of our Now - disease, hate, or shame - we have to ask where it came from. We can look back through the threads of time and find the causes - maybe familial patterns or social prejudices. Ignoring our histories, glossing over and trying to forget doesn’t help heal. Erasing the parts we don’t like doesn’t change them.

Highlighting the parts that support the person with the highlighter as the victor, maketh not a victor.

In fact, sometimes we have to highlight the parts that don’t get highlighted, the parts that get shuffled to the side because they are uncomfortable and the people who experienced the tragic brunt of those parts will never find comfort and their own beautiful moments within those stories - which, too, are also ours - will never be able to fully shine.

Closing one's eyes and choosing to live in darkness through the parts where the rivers that made one trampled the lives of others isn't a path towards a brighter future. We’ll never learn to direct that river and our children and our children’s children will continue to make the same mistakes we did. Sure, admitting one even made a mistake - rather than just doubling down - squeezing one’s eyes shut ever harder and muffling one’s ears - it takes some effort, some self-awareness and understanding - a deep grokking - of how all of those rivers that make this now - your rivers and my rivers - the rivers halfway across the world - vast rivers of human movements grinding down canyons, shaping mountains and all of the little streams and tributaries - we are all of them: their glorious performances - their moments of light as well as their tragedies and travails.

Their histories are ours and our own rivers, from our first moments to our last - are intertwined forever. We must never forget that.

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TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Announcing the New Book

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Limited Edition Canvas Prints

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Murals

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Paintings

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Installation Art

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Live Art • Presentations • Performance

TenThousandVisions

The Artwork of Michael & Violet Divine

Teaching and Mentorship

Michael Divine

Violet Divine

Follow us on Instagram: @michael_divine + @ultraviolet55

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