Philosophy Now Forum

Greetings Philosophers,

I am a 66 year old painter-architect-songwriter-bioscience hobbyist-essayist now living near Nashville, Tennessee. I studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1975-1979. I have two grown children and a grandchild. I am currently writing a series of 76 essays inspired by Stephen Jay Gould's book "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" I enjoy reading novels, bioscience books and most recently, French PoMo philosophy ( Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Debord, Baudrillard)
blog: theblissengine.com
art website: jimblakeart.com
architecture website: theblakegrouparchitecture.com
I post on Facebook almost daily - friend me and join the discussion there. ( Jim Blake)

Welcome. I saw your website jimblakeart.com. Your art work's very impressive. I'm not one for nude paintings though, but the rest is amazing. It seems as if you are one of those artists like van gogh, group of seven, the impressionists etcetera - a professional. Your art seems to be a mixture of modern and abstract. Beautiful work. You seem to write a lot too. Your quotes are impressive. Just read a few lines of one of your essays, and if I may yet comment - I don't agree with you, for don't we all like shine, gloss, the superficialness at times according to the moment as at a party, because do we like the dirt and the drudgery instead? No. Liking the shine and the gloss is not to say that depth is not appreciated. And for the same, I can also say that your paintings are lacking the real for they are abstract, and for the nudity I can say that it is obscene. My point - we all like variety but this is not to say that we ever let go of the substantial or the depth or the meaningful. Americans are not wrong. And you are not wrong. We are all right when our intentions are right.

Mr. Gasoline wrote:Greetings Philosophers,
I am a 66 year old painter-architect-songwriter-bioscience hobbyist-essayist now living near Nashville, Tennessee. I studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1975-1979.

Welcome to the forum, My wife and I designed our house based on what we wanted, not on what our square footage indicated we should have. We finally found a builder who built what we wanted, not what he thought we should have. At one point he wanted to bring in topsoil and plant grass, I asked if he was going to mow it, and when he said "No", he scrapped that idea, because I said I wasn't going to mow it either.