Featured Artist Jim Otis

Painter Jim Otis changes our perspective of nature and the world around us. See more of his humorous and delightful portfolio by visiting his website.

 

 

We all want to leave the world a better place. Hopefully, my visions of landscapes and magical realism imagery will carry on for the “good education.”

 

 

With my combination of realism and subjective visualizations, I offer the viewer a complete micro-macro look at the world around us. I want to provide a window through which I can help clarify conscious perspective of living, and life on this planet and beyond.

 

 

Collectors can visualize in one view, “the veins in the plant leaves, and the farthest stars in the universe.”

 

 

When people are open to feel my passions for life, I want my paintings to visually tell people that everything is the same. Nature and pure consciousness are the same. If I can imitate nature, people will be drawn to my edgy, radically colored schemes with my “consciousness of color’” styles. My vision is that Nature is God, and God is Nature.

 

 

My life started in Central Wisconsin, 1946. Appreciation for fine art had was never a quality in my family, as no one had ever drawn anything meaningful beyond childhood scribbles, going back a few generations, as I was told. When about 10, I asked for, and received some drawing pencils and “official” drawing paper. I drew our family dog, and from then on, I drew everything.

 

 

It felt good to create something from nothing and fool viewers with realism, even when I was 17. After I left high school came my life in big cities. Nature as I knew it was gone. I had made it into three different art schools and I had a choice. After those days, I travelled to the tropics, and moved back to live in northern California. I started doing paintings and sold throughout the Bay Area until the reality of family set in.

 

 

My paintings are not only to decorate a wall. I want them to immerse the viewer in waves of clear detail with sharp edges and perspective leading the eyes to infinity.

 

 

My current painting projects include a large suite of Hawaiian landscapes, all sizes, and extending my message of “Awe of Life and Nature.”

 

 

A quote from someone else about my work:

“The surrealistic works of American artist Jim Otis celebrate the creative process, both experimenting with and exploring familiar concepts and images in new and different ways. Otis’s compositions are edgy and unexpected, and he uses color effectively to draw the viewer’s eye into his world. Here, they are invited to become immersed in the sensual elements of the painting, which help the viewer to feel what the artist has seen and captured.”  – Agora Gallery, New York. October, 2014

 

 

This morning I read this: “Know that just as the waves of our oceans are water, thoughts are made of the luminous, knowing Nature of the mind.”  Dalai Lama

 

 

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