Comfort food, comfort art

Since I was very young, I have always drawn or had a pencil or crayon in hand. Today, the crayon is more likely a mouse with the wire still attached, but I'm still drawing pretty much the same stuff; cartoons, super heroes, plants, flowers, shrubs and non-sense art; also known as abstracts.

I've spoken with many artists who grew up in absentee father homes. Dad lived with us, but he was present to eat, sleep and yell. We never knew what kind of mood Dad would be in so my siblings and I would retreat to our bedrooms, when not eating dinner or watching TV.

TV. There lies the most common theme in so much of my thoughts and art. TV had so much influence, most days I can barely escape it. Not that I try. TV was the escape we needed because 1960s television was all about escape. Who knew? It's old news now, but for me, if I wasn't watching TV, I was drawing on inspiration. Characters add fantasy situations that stayed in my head long after Mom and Dad finally divorced. But there is where my training as an animator was born. The art time for me was comfort time. A time to retreat and dig deeply into all the things that protected me from the reality we had survived.

My first TV experience happened very young before I had a brother or sister. It was the George Reeves' Superman. Although I don't remember much in the way of dialog, I remember he flew, he had a cape and he was real. I never saw the comics or cartoon incarnations until much later. So, Superman became one of my first super hero obsessions, followed a few years later by Batman, an even bigger obsession. Just before Batman hit the airwaves, we moved to Northern California; Vacaville, California to be exact. Dad worked for the "flying colors," Braniff Airlines. These were some pretty good times. We'd run inside every time we knew Batman was about to come on. 7:30 pm PCT. Dad hated Batman, more than that I think he may have hated anything we liked on TV which was pretty much everything until Sanford and Son. We all watched that, but you can forget Bewitched, the Munsters and My Favorite Martian.

The mid-1960s also had a slew of Saturday morning cartoons, which was pretty much the only time you could watch any cool super heroes. It was probably here my mind exploded and my life as a decent, normal person destined to be a car wash worker was over. The cartoon parasite had drained me of my free will to the point that all I could think about was becoming a character designer, color-stylist and later, a full fledged animator.

My world revolved around times I could get away with drawing instead of homework and painting instead of sleeping. It was my wonderful world of color all rolled into my head.

Today, I'm still extracting those images and finding there a lot more room for new things. But all roads lead back to the retro future where people fly, coyotes fall off cliffs and never get hurt and little boys can grow up to live there dreams every day.

See and buy Charlie Rose's Superhero inspired work at here, at The Space Monkey Shop.

Surely you've not forgotten about Space Monkey, that cute, loveable, cuddly monkey from space that brings color, fun, and light to boring places, have you?

Space Monkey will brighten up even the darkest night with his whimsical, fanciful, and beautiful art, but now, he can be worn, and bring all this goodness to you! Now, you can show off Space Monkey with anorganic shirt, a hoodie, a bib, an organic onesie, a water bottle, even a messenger bag! There's so much to choose from, it's bananas.

Soon, we'll add more art & more gear that will have you going ape. Think Beatles meets Space Monkey...enticing, isn't it?

Art & Consciousness

Why art? Why Space Monkey?

If you think back when you were young, much younger in some cases, what do you remember? The simplest answer is pictures. Your entire life is a book full of memory pictures of people, places, things, events, epiphanies, creativity and so on.

When I think back on some of those times, I realize I became a very young artist when things weren't going as well as I thought they should. I retreated into coloring books and would re-color my world and make it a better, happier place where I liked to live. Yet I discovered that this also works when I was happy too. In fact drawing and coloring created a different vibration all around me and I realized not only was my life full of great images and pictures around me, I could also create my own pictures and people loved it. They still do. I was at my high school reunion and the first thing my old friends remembered about me was I was was the guy who used to draw cartoons. They remembered pictures. I still draw and paint today.

21st Century people are no different today, except they have access to more media to retreat into from their daily lives. We have manifested a new world which changes constantly before our eyes. We live in an ocean of motion.

Through all these things, our "happy places" bring us all to a new level of consciousness. Whatever good things we enjoy or create for ourselves is what brings us a good feeling or positive vibration. We feel in sync with ourselves, our friends. It makes us better people to others and to ourselves.

At Space Monkey, we want to have an opportunity to share our pictures of some of the things we enjoy and we believe you will too. It is a proven fact that art changes community. It promotes happiness and a feeling of well-being, whether it's certain colors or a scene or abstract, we know somehow artworks of all kinds create certain feelings within. Even though we have a specific focus on kids, we know as adults everybody enjoys art and can certainly relate to a time when they saw a cartoon or comic book that made them feel happy and joyful. Isn't that the bottom line for each and every one of us? And when you feel happy don't you want to share with others that feeling so they can also be happy?

We are grateful to have this amazing opportunity to create something that is bigger than what it seems on the surface. It is, in fact, our legacy that we can leave after we're long gone.

With today's technology, creating and sharing art has become a gigantic industry. Art is accessible in places all over our planet. So you don't have to leave your house to go to a museum or gallery, even though we highly recommend it whenever possible.

Whatever you do today, find an image that makes you happy and carry that image with you. If you can't share the image, at least share the happiness you felt the second it changed your mood.

What are you going to do now? How are you going to instantly make your life better in the next second?