{"entry":[{"id":"14101147","hash":"1beb8f372bffdf8a179458048ae0116d","requestHash":"tropicaltheartist","profileUrl":"http:\/\/gravatar.com\/tropicaltheartist","preferredUsername":"tropicaltheartist","thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/1.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1beb8f372bffdf8a179458048ae0116d","photos":[{"value":"http:\/\/1.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1beb8f372bffdf8a179458048ae0116d","type":"thumbnail"},{"value":"http:\/\/2.gravatar.com\/userimage\/14101147\/0d08f14fb2c22744cd3de7012e34dc40"}],"name":{"givenName":"Michael","familyName":"Topic","formatted":"Michael Topic"},"displayName":"tropicaltheartist","aboutMe":"I love colours.  Not colour.  Colour is an abstract concept.  I love the actual colours.  Concrete.  Real.  Tangible.  Each one is a friend.   Each one affects me subtly differently.  Colours dance and sing together.  That harmony of light inspires me, excites me, uplifts me, energises me and infuses me with joy and well being.  Colours, seen in relation to each other, offer tranquillity.  Bright colours are the direct route to saturated beauty.  Abundant colour is abundant beauty.  \r\nThe act of painting is, for me, the transference of pure love.  Love for the colours and what I see as my subject, through the canvas and the paint, to the viewer.  I paint to surround myself with beauty and to counteract the excess ugliness in the world.  Beauty is the antidote.  Beauty is the solution.\r\nPainting is my newest medium to express innovation, creativity, beauty, hope and the future.  I didn\u2019t paint at all until I was in my mid forties.  I didn\u2019t draw either.  Somewhere along the way I had been convinced that artistic talent was for somebody else.  I had listened to people programmed by a lifetime of subtle propaganda to function in and perpetuate a capitalist society.  Now I have glimpsed the truth: that art is for everybody.  Art is democratic and anarchistic, in the very best senses of those words.  Criticism and denigration of any artist\u2019s work is but an artefact of commerce and hierarchy.  Convincing somebody to forsake their art is nothing more than an abuse of power.  Knowing this is empowering.\r\nBut don\u2019t conclude that I had no medium at all until my forties.  I have always had a creative medium.  It has been (and still is) music, invention, software, electronics, ideas, wood, metal, my garden, writing.  In each medium, I find the colours and I use them to express my inner joy.  \r\nCreating lets me exert a meaningful counter pressure to the crushing weight of conformity, convention, oppression and restrictions against freedom that sit like a dead weight on all of us.  Some blithely buy into the propaganda and don\u2019t trouble themselves with the obviously inexplicable things that belie the truth.  I cannot.  I am too aware.  I can sense intuitively that all is not what it seems, with the world.  Creating is my one way to fight back and maintain my equilibrium and peace.  I choose to fight with love and beauty.  And when I fight, I fight with lightness, wit, surprise, delight, some humour and without taking myself too seriously.  Ultimately, the bad guys can\u2019t win against abundant love and beauty.\r\nPainting is the latest tool in my self-appointed mission to imagine, invent, inspire, create, encourage, enlighten and edify.\r\n","urls":[]}]}