Why Art and Artists?
My time travel novels often feature art and artists—you may wonder why. It’s because I grew up with an artist father who painted constantly and invited many artist friends to our home. He took us to working studios, local art exhibitions, and art museums in the Los Angeles area.
The smell of oil paint and turpentine evokes childhood memories. Saturday afternoons, watching my father mix oil paints and dash paint onto the canvas. Here’s one a painting by my father. In the mid-50s he painted these fishing boats at the dock in San Pedro, where we lived. It represented his passion for sport fishing. I loved the flaring spotlights, the night blues, and the way light and midnight blue meet and interpenetrate. My father’s time and focus on his art showed a devotion second only to his fishing trips. He loved the ocean. You can read more about my background here.
Art in Your Daily Life
Art that’s part of your daily life is a wonderful pleasure, especially if you can view it walking around your town without having to travel to a museum. Luckily, I live in a town that values community art and makes it part of our daily experience, and where art can be seen on in plazas, parks, and on walls of buildings, as well as in galleries. It’s an organic feature of our city and free to all. Here we have towering sculptures in the city park, murals on boarded up storefronts, and paintings on mechanical boxes. Where in some places graffiti artists must skulk around at night with spray cans to create, Walnut Creek invited local artists to graffiti a boarded-up storefront with messages of unity and cheer.
Art in my Stories
Each of my Timegathering Series novels features an artist, whether visual or literary. One of these days I’ll write a story featuring a musician. Including artists in my fiction gave me the chance to explore their unusual lives, loves, and most of all, how they made their art. Time travel was my passport. Artists featured in my books:
Gianlorenzo Bernini – The Renaissance Club
Smarthistory’s short video on Bernini’s “David”
Michelangelo – The Renaissance Club
Patience Lovell Wright – Undoing Time
Jane Austen – Jane Austen, Time Traveler
Time Travel – Does It Really Exist?
Here’s a bit of time travel intrigue. Does art through the age bear signs that time travel is real? Tantalizing objects in classical art suggest time travelers may have visited the Ancient World, the Renaissance, and the Victorian Era. Have a chuckle over this article:
Is time travel real? There’s proof — in art!
The Timegathering Series is here. Adventure, romance, history and time travel,
All my books are on Amazon here.
My Facebook author page has updates, news and reading ideas
**** If you like my books, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, BookBub, or wherever you hang out with other readers. Thanks! ***