I just added a new piece of art to Saatchi Art! Adam here is the link for more info. It is a special sale price to celebrate new beginnings.

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@artcanvastour
I just added a new piece of art to Saatchi Art! Adam here is the link for more info. It is a special sale price to celebrate new beginnings.
Key West blog post…highlights from a much appreciated vacation.
The Reefs in Key West gave the word “colorful” new interest. An artist never really takes time to do nothing, so a study of the fish and other tropical delights filled a sketchbook. While snorkeling for the first time, objects stood out for not only there unusual patterns of color but forms that are metamorphic. They have yet to invent underwater art supplies, so as the age old, study discipline, “what must I remember” was employed again and again successfully. Here, a pastel of a Parrot fish. You can actually hear them chewing on the coral reef underwater. I was told that their actions make 80% of the beach sand. Not sure how this could be true, but they were very, very busy. Once the chewing noise was recognized for what it was – it was Weird.
A fact from the aquarium docents: Jellyfish are the favorite food of the sea turtle, I knew this! ( and have a whole sketchbook of jellyfish/turtle sketches) When the turtles are not safe to nest on a beach, the jellyfish move in. Jellyfish in the water make for unpleasant swimming conditions. During our residency on Indian Rocks Beach I did not see one jellyfish, ever! The sea turtles nests were protected by the "turtle patrol". A sad reason sometimes happens to be inspired to paint and when I painted the pastel of the turtle hatch-ling above I had just learned a new fact : of 10,000 hatched sea turtles, only one will live to reproduce it’s self. I guess I celebrated the One !
Koy Goldfish
Aug, 2013 This week was one for a bit of decorating in the new home. Missing the crashing of the waves outside of the windows of the apartment on the beach has called for some sort of replacement water sound to break the quiet. Meeting a very knowledgeable person, at the local pet center, I have decided to raise a few Koy. Perhaps a Moat around our new castle,
"Koy to Swim the Moat" !
Moat? This home is NOT in a flood zone according to the USDA, but in the rainy season water encircles the house. Considered a protected wetland it is pure and pristine, with water quality A+. A primary reason for living in Florida is the warm winter and with it's land mass actually a peninsula, fresh air off the salt water.
Last weekend, armed with placement of Bat houses, we readied for Mosquitoes.
Not one bite yet. Thanks to the hundreds of resident frogs. All shapes and sizes. They say the health of environments can be judged by the frog population. This place is frog and toad heaven. Even without the bats
They can be friendly or skittish, depending on how they are treated. I could hardly believe that the lifespan of a Koy is up to 200 years, with most at 80 years. With research I found a single “special” Koy for auction for 30k and most at a foot in length start at $1,200 per fish. A little like the Shitzu Buddha Dog originally bred for Chinese emperors, these fish are told to bring companionship.
For now a trickling and splashing is coming from an aquarium placed the kitchen window for our two inch pair of speckled Koy while we await the dreamed of a Koy pond in my little piece of Everglades.
A story for my friends that encourage my sentimental side…
A passionate journal writer, I have never written about this story of a close call with drowning. Now is the time.
Awaiting a 45 min lay over on my flight to Hawaii I pulled out my journal to kill some time. I’d been though many journals over the years, they helped me work out issues and frustrations that life throws at you. Today I knew just what to write.
I had this story on my mind lately of something that happened a long time ago but I had never written about it. I uncapped my favorite pen and began.
Even at five years old I took like a fish to the water. I was so excited when my parents took us on vacation to the Bahamas to escape the unforgiving New York winter. One morning my mom, my younger sister, Colleen, and I were playing with sand pals on the beach outside the hotel.
“Let’s build a castle,” Colleen said. “We can fill the buckets and add a watery moat around it.”
“Don’t forget a drawbridge,” Mom said. She was always so protective. We needed more sand for the walls but after choosing the yellow bucket I was finely was ready get the water for the moat. I went down to the water, filled my little plastic bucket but was surprised as my feet sunk into the soft sand. They were hard to pull out. It was very interesting how the toes, feet and ankles drew softly down. The foam from the waves were bubbly and mesmerizing. I was curious what I looked like with no feet. The waves were rhythmic and musical.
Behind me, Mom and Colleen debated the reliability of their sand castle walls to protect the imaginary people of the castle from the waves and tides. I was not very far from them and they didn’t see I was walking into the waves.
I was following subsequent little waves as the little waves receded back into the sea. A large wave that I had not seen crashed into me and within seconds the sea was up to my neck. Proficient in the doggy paddle I started a swim back to shore. That’s when an even stronger wave pulled me below and my little body met with a dangerous rip current.
I didn’t alarm. I didn’t struggle. It did not seem like I was suppose to be afraid. It felt like a carnival ride and I did not realize that I was really being pulled a ways off of shore and into water that was well over my head. I observed my toes again and they were, along with my ankles buried deep in soft white sand in the sea bed floor.
It seemed I was standing there forever. I was amazed at the world that was around me! Fish swam between my knees and around my head, even ran circles around my middle and tummy. All types of sentient beings such as octopus, crawfish, angelfish and every color fish –orange, red, blue, yellow and green appeared as as if they were making a beautiful rainbow just for me as their game. A big, beautiful golden starfish moved slowly and sensitively onto a bank of light pink sand near me. Truly the starfish was a sign of peace I had thought.
The little fish tails brushed against my skin. It was like they were now friends, swimming over to say hello.
Even now I can not remember a time when I have felt more serene than that morning on the seabed floor with the, sunshine above in the clear blue waters magically filtering down as if light beams from heaven. I remember thinking that if I was granted one wish upon the angel starfish at my feet it would be to forever be in that peaceful place in this embrace.
Suddenly I was no longer in the waters watching my fish but I was in a lifeguard’s arms being carried a shore. She rubbed my chest and I coughed up seawater. Mom and Colleen were besides themselves with fears with the idea of possibly losing me. The exciting journey for me was over, and the overwhelming sense of serenity, was gone.
As I recapped my pen and closed my journal the gentleman sitting next to me leaned forward smiled and said that I must have been writing something very interesting for he observed my emotions as I wrote.
A bit flushed I stated “ I journal often”. The man gave me a expression that hinted that he wanted to know more. “ Well” I said, “I do not know why but for the past couple of days I have been thinking about a time when I was 5 years old and almost drowned”.
The man grew quiet and I saw a welling of tears in his eyes. “I did loose my five year old son to drowning many years ago”. He uttered.
“Oh dear” I said. What a sad thing I brought up. I felt a flush and then a tear in my own eye to join his.
“I am sorry” I said. “I know he’s in heaven now,” he replied. “The thing that still makes me feel a sad and bewildered is the thought how much he suffered, how frightened he must have felt drowning.”
“I would like to read you what I wrote, please, trust this, my story, you should hear”. I read my journal entry as I have just relayed it to you dear reader,… the waters pulling me gently, …the colors of the new friends, the excitement of seeing a land that I did not know existed but mostly how I have remembered the peace of my emotions that I have held close from this time as I child and that the feeling has not been matched since.
“My mother was unfortunately scared stiff that day,” I said. “But the memory remains with me as a strength in facing my own mortality. The event, on my end, was a truly happy and peaceful one.
PAFA Alumni Studio Fellows Program
August 22, 2014
PAFA is pleased to announce the PAFA Alumni Studio Fellows Program. Designed to support the professional development of its alumni and to foster our mission of making artists, the PAFA Alumni Studio Fellows Program is being launched to...
Look at this cheap Studio space for PAFA grads in the Academy building! only 175 mth. Brand new idea, great to be in artist's working spaces, check it out if you are in Philly!!! (I am in FL).
Jules Raguso Artist, a how to video on the simple silkscreen stencil technique.
Painting is Pandora and the Elephant and will be in a show at The Studio at 620, a 10 yr old non profit arts space that features the best emerging artists in the area. Opening is 6 to 9pm ish Friday Aug 1. The gallery is one block off Central Ave at 6th St, easy to find in downtown St Petersburg FL. I will be a lively fun opening and we hope to see you there. Get out and have a good time on us!
Pandora, the story.
I was in China when it first occurred to me to reimage the story of Pandora and her box of horrors. Classically, the scene is full of ghouls, villains, demons and terrors clawing their way to freedom and streaking across the sky. The images are dark and wicked, promising death, sorrow, misery and all manner of discomfort. One of my favorite Pandora images is of the dreads rising from the cracked box in the shape of dragons with the heads of lions, pigs, insects and fish. Yet over and over the story has been told of the little girl charged by the gods with the protection of a box, full of the sorrows of the world. When her curiosity overcomes her she pries open the lid and in so doing, releases wickedness in what was otherwise and apparently perfect utopia of happiness and peace.
An interesting take on humanity, but it’s not really my style.
It was early morning and I was walking the streets of Hong Kong. The smog was thick that day and I was cursing myself for not remembering my mask. All about me hustled men, women and children, racing off to begin their day. While traveling I tend to keep artist’s hours, and though my walk was happening at what seemed like a very early time to me and my sleep-filled eyes, I was amazed by the number of people moving along the sidewalks and lanes. Face after face passed me with serious expressions painted upon them. Like a constant example of the severity of life, each new countenance reminded me that for so many life is an arduous journey. They rise, struggle, beat their breasts all day long until the night takes them and they can sleep until the morning comes and it all begins again. Over and over, the cycle holds them like a lover and pins them down with jealous hands. Day in and day out, from the youngest person I saw to the oldest woman sitting in her home at that very moment, so many in the world seemed trapped in a system that would never release them.
I felt miserable.
I felt lonely.
I felt grief and remorse for the loss of so many lives still being lived.
A thought popped into my head that if Pandora’s Box were to open here the creatures within would have very little work to accomplish this morning. It was a terrible thought, but it was all I could muster at the moment.
And then something incredible happened.
There are those times in life – they happened quickly and I shiver to think of how many I have missed – moments when something truly remarkable happens. Angles and miracles and joy and passion and goodness float past, hoping to be caught and spread, and while it seems that most miss it there will always be one who sees the moment and dances. As I cringed at the pained and tired faces around me, I was bowled over by one such happy creature. A little girl, probably no more than eight or nine years old, went gliding past as though lost in the most wondrous of worlds. The smile upon her face radiated an infectious goodness that pulled me from my sorrows and pricked me with joy. It was as though she was immune to the drudgery and the monotony, and the mundane had no power over her.
She was alive.
Like a dancer in a graveyard, the girl was so dramatically more full of life than the persons sharing the same space and time. She was just on the verge of that age when life for a girl becomes difficult and awkward and uncertain. She was perhaps a couple years from doubt and self-consciousness, but for now the girl was bubbling with trust, love and joy.
And then it hit me.
We have been looking at Pandora and her box all wrong. What if each of us possessed a box? What if each of us had the choice of Pandora, to open it or keep it sealed? The world itself is already so full of sorrow and hate, so what if the box didn’t contain misery? What if the box contained love, joy, peace, happiness and comfort? What if the box didn’t hold demons and vile creatures but light and energy? What if we each had one of these boxes, but fear kept us from opening them?
That was my thought when I painted Pandora. The colors and butterflies represent the love and peace each of us have to share. The elephants represent luck, peace, wisdom and happiness, celebrating as another child of this world chooses to open their box and spread goodness in the world. The woman is not Pandora but a symbol for humanity and friendship. She of course only thrives when we open ourselves and let our hearts spread goodness. The stage is designed after a circus since I have always felt the three-ring metaphor was the perfect image of the stage in which we play out most of our lives.
The painting is meant to encourage people to consider your contribution to this world of ours, and to release only what will improve our short time here.
-Jules
Children love puzzles. At a certain age a puzzle touches a creative spark inside. Low edition of 8 are hand-printed silkscreen and stencils, they are an art creation and signed. The artist's connection to puzzles is strong, Jules became a 4 year old child working with puzzles and butterflies. You may say a bit expensive for a puzzle for a child to play with, but not only will the child be playing with a puzzle, they will be touching and feeling the expression of a real work of art; truly special ! A standard frame size of 8" x 10" gives an adult the chance to display the puzzle creation and a free video of it in process is on ArtCanvasTour.com under gift shop. Have a peek! free 3 day shipping in USA
I Love…A Green Line.
I Love… Lovers.
Become a Butterfly Collector without a Net!! Through out my life the butterfly has made its self known to me. Gathered are some for you to see. My
www.etsy.com/shop/artcanvastour
Getting an Etsy.com shop onto my website, …. easier said then done.
But done! and below is the link.
Getting an Etsy.com shop onto my website, …. easier said then done.
But done! and below is the link.
You have to stay open to new things. Liz my dear friend is able to zip zip on the computer with graphics, I find it amazing.. Thought to give it a try... the black and white is the original oil on canvas taken before I painted it. The completed color project done with paint computer program took longer then I anticipated.
A more academic approach to abstraction. It is framed under museum glass so no glaring gets in the way of the colors and movements. It was hanging on a west facing wall with a sun stream at certain times of the day and moved and sparked so beautifully.
Become a Butterfly Collector without a Net!! Through out my life the butterfly has made its self known to me. Gathered are some for you to see. My