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Thank You.

Looks pretty good to me.



That's a very cool concept.

Peace,

Ian

Hi RandY

Sounds Like you are your Own Harshest critic.

the work looks powerful to me.

jm

Hi Randy,

Perhaps now I better understand your sad smiley on the other thread...

That said, while you know I respect your opinion, I would like to challenge it some. One of the definitions of "pretense" is make-believe....and in that sense, paint with pretense CREATES art -- because you're making your audience believe what you've created is real. Whether it's too real for comfort is another matter.

Regardless of your intentions or topic, the very process of creation in fact validates your work. And the translation of what's in your mind's eye to something outside yourself (be it sheet music or canvas) is the very essence of art.

I believe you were quite brave to even attempt the series you describe. And while it's certainly intriguing to me from a psychoanalytical standpoint, I'm sure it presented a challenging "look in the mirror" -- how much is me, how much is the patient? I don't suggest the ratio of one to the other is out of "proper proportion" -- I just wonder if the two halves worked together so well artistically you felt it reflected poorly on you somehow...

You are a talented and intuitive artist Randy. This particular piece is very provocative, and from a selfish standpoint, I'm sorry you discarded the others from the series. While perhaps they were not meant for the rest of the world to see....I suspect you got more out of them than you realize.

Thank you so much for sharing this....and I hope you don't take my words the wrong way. I'm not casting judgements.... just offering my 38 cents in an effort to encourage you.

A big fan,
Beth

I thought it was very well done. Not something I want to hang on my living room wall (too depressing,) however it would be a great illustration for a book or magazine, or even an album cover.

Cool!

Randy,
Your art speaks to me in a very deep manner. I belong to an international organization which enlightens people about psychiatric drug abuse. I've personally experienced several friends, family members and co-workers fall prey to those drugs and three have committed suicide as a result.

I feel there is not only great aesthetics in your work, but also a message to share. The concept of blending a person's face with the drug effects and psychiatric viewpoint is amazingly powerful and could be shown in an exhibit.

If you were to take actual people and do a painting of them with a combination of before and after the drugs, it could be be an exhibit with actual truth in it.

I believe as artists that we can communicate much more powerfully via our art. If you ever wish to take on such a project, please let me know and I can get you some photos of persons before and after the drugs.

In any event, you have much more talent and insight than I perceive you give yourself credit.

Thanks for sharing your art.

Heidi

Randy,
I'm sorry you replaced the picture. I showed it to my husband and all he could say was "WOW!" It is a stunning work of art. Please share it again. I find it much more "useful" and pleasing than the smiley face....

Heidi

Randy,
I totally understand about "feeling brave,"especially where my art is concerned.

For now, I am just so happy to see such wonderful and aesthetic art pieces and hope you will share more!

You are very, very gifted.

Heidi

Randy,
What type of paint did you use on this? Just curious of the medium.

Heidi

Thank you

Randy,
WOW! That is awesome data. I had no idea. How very cool! No wonder the colors are so beautiful. It looks almost like an Italian painting. I think they use glazes too, don't they?

I also LOVE the eye(s). It is so deep and piercing. I think that if an artist can breath life into a portrait where the eyes truly look back you, then that artist has the highest of gifts.


Thanks so much!

Heidi

I dont myself blame the drugs or the Psychiatric Treatment Establishment........

I worked as a Psych Tech for 5 years following college.....During that time I worked in several facilites including an admission unit of a major medical center/a state hospital/a community mental health inpatient unit of a county hospital and a large private psychiatric hospital........so I pretty much saw it all at every patient care delivery level...it was quite an education and experience....the people I worked with were all just as compassionate and dedicated to helping as those in any other field of medicine......and medications were never developed for any purpose other than helping people....in my experience "success and failure" per se-were mostly up to the patients themselves.....the therapy and staff are only half the team.......to blame the drugs and the establishment that prescribes them is-in my opinion-like blaming a weight loss center when folks go back to their old ways afterwards.....recovery from psychiatric illness is not a passive pill popping process.......you have to really work at it...not everybody does........taking any medication without changing the dynamics of your situation will not make any difference at all..if you stay with an abusive husband etc etc you are defeating anti depressants...etc etc......there are no magic pills-they are only crutches to help you while you strengthen your muscles to walk again.......I just think psychiatry in general gets a bad rap for not producing success levels it cant possibly produce without the determined involvement of the people it treats.....I have seen people who were determined to recover and their recovery was greatly aided by the medications...you have to make dynamic pro active decisions that often mean getting out of self defeating patterns......thats where those who simply pop pills fail.........and psychiatry/psychopharmocology is not to blame for those failures.....just my opinion based on my experience working in that field..............and of course my opinion is not meant to state anything bad about Randys artwork....which in and of itself-is great..............my compliments Randy

Tom

Tom,
While I'm sure you met some wonderful people while working in that field, the statistics globally tell a more brutal story. But, by no means am I invalidating your viewpoint. I'm merely pointing out mine. We are all entitled to our own.

Check out some data at www.cchr.org if you'd like to get more statistics about the relationship between the physicians, psychiatrists, drug companies and FDA. See how they are making money by drugging billions of children in the schools and how there are all too frequent episodes of violence and suicides connected with the psyche drugs such all 12 of the college shootings.

I just think that a "profession" which does not have medical fact behind their "diseases" but merely votes them into existence and then places that new "disease" in their book so they can now sell drugs for it...well...it's a bit nutty to me.

I even have a video from one of their psychiatric conferences which clearly shows the head of the psychiatric association admitting this. Yet, for some reason, they continue to get billions of dollars of funding.

But, the good news is that the lawsuits are now hot and heavy. So, that is having an impact on them.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now! LOL!

But, as you said, Randy's artwork is stunning. It really communicated to me.

Blessings,
Heidi

I fully respect and appreciate your views as well Heidi......

I am just saying that having worked in that field myself there is no ongoing conspiracy..many of the folks who got into that line of work as psychiatrists or whatever-did so because of seeing mental illness in their family or friends which made them want to make a difference in the lives of those afflicted with those illnesses....nobody seems to doubt it when someone who loses a family member to cancer goes into onocology as a career.........and these are not illnesses made up for the benefit of the doctors and drug companies treating them......in my opinion and experience...the biggest danger I see in the mental illness or behavioral medicine field is folks ignoring real experts and therapists in this field and instead going with the pseudo-psychologists or pop psychologists who sham and scam with this or that trendy and highly marketed book or self help/home remedy stuff .............chemical imbalances in the brain and other serious organic mental health problems cannot be treated by external means of psychoanalysis/talk therapy alone.......thats like saying you can cure diabetes with a dietary change.....while that will help to an extent if you dont take the prescribed medicine you will be a dead diabetic......but anyway-I do appreciate and respect your viewpoint......you are a very talented intelligent and charming gal and Las Vegas is much the better for having you there as a performer and civic minded citizen.......and again we both admire Randys artwork......always enjoy seeing your posts......

regarding the Virginia Tech killer as one example..he was in fact a classic textbook paranoid schizophrenic who was never given any anti-psychotic drugs to combat the obviously advanced stage of his illness...........anti-depressants will not break or treat psychotic disorders or episodes.....had he been-and had Virginia had any remotely effective form of gun control before that massacre-I dare say the tragedy would never have happened.......again-my opinion and you and others are entitled to yours......

Tom

Tom,
First, the truth about "diseases" coined by the American Psychiatric Association and how they "invent" them can also be googled. Here's one line to google if you want:

"The Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that has never stood the test of science"

So, the discussion of "what type of disorder and what type of drugs" should the Virginia Tech killer have been prescribed can be a very long one.

However, I think the real issue is that the drugs he WAS on (anti-depressants) are KNOWN to cause both violence and suicide, and HAVE been linked to all the shootings. That should say something.

Here's an article on that:


VIRGINIA TECH SERIAL KILLING: Autopsy Results Confirm Omaha Shooter Was Yet Another Killer Under the Influence of Psychiatric Drugs

Jan 18th, 2008 by Patrick Valtin
Watchdog Urges for Investigation Into Psychiatric Drug-Induced Teen Shootings


Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is calling for a federal investigation into the link between psychiatric drugs and senseless teen shootings, following autopsy results confirming 19-year-old Nebraska mall shooter Robert Hawkins was under the influence of the “anti-anxiety” drug Valium when he killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide last month. Hawkins is the eleventh recent teen shooter under the influence of psychiatric drugs, resulting in 48 dead and 89 wounded. Many of these drug-induced shootings occurred in schoolyards, including the massacres by Eric Harris at Columbine, Colorado and Jeff Weise at Red Lake, Minnesota.

Another notorious figure, John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan and three secret service agents in a 1981 assassination attempt, was under the influence of the same drug as Robert Hawkins-Valium-which has been documented to cause violence, including murder and suicide. Hinckley was prescribed the drugs by his psychiatrist, and later admitted that the drugs turned him into a killer.

Another 19-year-old, James Wilson, killed two 8-year-old girls and wounded several others with his revolver at a South Carolina elementary school in 1988, after seeing psychiatrists and taking psychiatric drugs including Valium since he was 14. Californian Lynwood Drake III also took Valium before he shot and killed six people and himself in 1992.

Clinical psychopharmacologist and psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin wrote in his book, Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (1997) that “benzodiazepines [a class of drugs that includes Valium and Xanax] can produce a wide variety of abnormal mental responses and hazardous behavioral abnormalities, including rebound anxiety and insomnia, psychosis, paranoia, violence, antisocial acts, depression, and suicide.”

Although it is not yet known if Hawkins was prescribed the Valium found in his system (something investigators are looking into), what is known is that a staggering $265,000 in state funds were spent on Hawkins’ behavior and addiction “treatment.” This expensive state “care” included four years in and out of treatment centers, psych evaluations, regular therapy and extensive prescriptions for powerful drugs including Zoloft, Adderall and Effexor, warned to cause “homicidal ideation.” This case clearly refutes the mental health industry’s standard negation of psychiatric drug-induced violence–the claim the patient did not get enough treatment, used to clamor for increased funding.

CCHR, concerned that most parents and consumers are unaware of the risk of homicide and suicide connected with these drugs, has launched a striking series of three PSAs warning of these side effects. The PSAs can be viewed at www.cchr.org/psas/. CCHR hopes that these PSAs serve to inform the public about the dangers of these drugs, and encourage support for a federal investigation into the link between these drugs and senseless teen violence.

well again Heidi-we have our disagreements about this subject
and I respect your right to your opinion-those of others...

whats more insane than these massacres that we have been clubbed into accepting as normal by the NRA gun lobby,is that they want MORE GUNS IN MORE PLACES....guns allowed in schools/churches/bars-you name it....Tennessee is even more gun crazy than Virginia was-and thats saying alot...

the slaughters will go on......and not because of psychiatry or psychiatric drugs.......thats my opinion and you have yours.....I wish you and yours peace and safety....good luck in Nevada.....

Tom