About me:

 

I'm a recovering artist. I was brought to life by Zeus.

 

I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I create my art for children and dogs.

 

All my art is fake. All fake. A collection of visual lies. It's up to you to find the truth. I hope someday my art will alter the course of humanity. Wish me luck. I want to be adored. "As an artist you want people to tell you how great you are" - Damien Hirst

 

My art is my answer. In the words of Judy Chicago - "I'm an Artist and a Troublemaker"

 

My Art is my real-life Opera - touching emotional cords - like a bat out of hell. A taste of paradise. An occasional touch of hell. "For something to be beautiful it doesn't have to be pretty" - Rei Kawakubo

 

I like to think my art is like a good cocktail. I want my art to be simple but complex at the same time. I want it (occasionally) to pose questions. I like to stimulate mixed feelings in the mind's eye. I like emotion. I like to provoke emotion. I like to seek answers to and ask questions about human behavior. I study human behavior. I understand human behavior. I've gained a lot of detractors because of it. Run rabbit run. My fondest wish is to influence people in a positive progressive way through my art and perception or way of seeing and understanding things. I've made a good part of my living as a lab R&D technician in analytical chemistry so I'm analytical as hell yet 99.999% visual. I think visually. I understand visual dynamics and systems - how things work or fail to work. Art is as close to a religion as I know. Art is a certain form of love. Art is a certain form of truth. And when discoveries are made, large or small they are made because of and by way of some form of art or artistic thinking. By way of Bisociation - a term Arthur Koestler coined in The Act of Creation.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qEsTCTuajE

 

Like any discipline, art is a language, a universal language. It has no international, racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic barriers. The best art communicates. It provokes something in us. It teaches us something. Sometimes that may even be groundbreaking - when we see something that we have never seen before. That's what really interests me. Because once we stop discovering and evolving we're fucked.

 

Like cooking - art can improve the quality of your life. High Art will give you direction and expand your understanding of the world. Great art will ground you and give you insight into the state of the world and man's evolution in it over time. Great art will make you cry. Great art will make you happy. Great art can make you a better person. Great art can make you angry. Great art can make you think. My art is my answer. Art is a dirty business and I'm a dirty boy.

 

A dialog I shared with another Flickr member back in 9/7/2015 that is telling about a good deal of my work:

 

Ann Garcia:

 

Sad. What is it that draws the eye to "junk"???? I myself am drawn, whether disgusted or not.

 

MB:

 

It's not really anything to be sad about. I could write a book about it. but basically out of chaos comes order. detritus and chaos are metaphors in the real world for upheaval and evolution taking place around the world. the objects of that disorder, whatever they might be - junk, trash, detritus, garbage, various forms of destruction, debris, provide fodder, a pallet from which to draw.

 

out of this lump of what seems to be nothing, beauty can be derived if one knows what to look for - even in the most mundane settings. chaos is a natural toolbox from which beauty (especially forms of abstraction) and the order can be fashioned. order can now begin. trash, debris, and chaos now become a form of birth.

 

if you want to go deeper, chaos is always evidence of a process at hand, whether man-made or by nature. entropy at work in the natural world. it's part of the order we understand as evolution. trash compels me to build. i want to clean it up. fix it. trash is a metaphor. a symbol. it calls out to us that something is wrong. something has failed. something is wrong and needs our attention. let's not make this mistake again. time to build again, but better. let's see if we can create something from nothing. let's see if we can touch the hand of god this time or perhaps get closer.

 

that's what I see in the trash. an opportunity to rebuild. I want to remember and I want to remember everything.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWGE9Gi0bB0

 

3:53

 

I use the camera as I would any other tool, even as a simple pencil - to produce art. I'm taking donations to purchase a Leica Q or Nikon D850 but for now, I work with a Nikon D610 most of the time, but I've been experimenting lately with a Moto X pure edition cell phone camera and various photo apps associated with its impressive 21MP camera. these cell cameras are perfect for street and candid shooting because they're so unobtrusive - but need a lot of light to match the resolution of a professional camera/lens with even a 10MP sensor. The real advantage, however, is it's always with you, isn't it? That's always the trick? Being at the right place at the right time.

 

Timing is everything as they say. So many images - so little time. I specialize in abstraction and more provocative content. It was it is it will be. Which Side Am I? All great art should be illegal. Art can bring us together. Art is the answer. Great Art is everlasting. Truth Never Dies.

 

Haagen-Dazs VANILLA SWISS ALMOND - possibly the best commercial ice cream ever made.

 

Temptation

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci8VQe_wqeI

 

I don't produce art because I want to - I produce art because I have to. I have no choice. I'm stuck. I like Rum. I've met a lot of important people here at Flickr and it has a collection of some of the mostest bestest photographers and artists I've ever come across in one place. It's a pretty dynamic place.

 

My art is my answer.

 

First of all, everyone, PLEASE go here:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/manuelbranco/?details=1

 

(Right-click link. Select "Open in New Window") to open and view my Flickr pages in the previous Flickr format (proximity). It's easier on the eyes!

 

I've somehow always been attracted to a certain beauty in imperfection. I'm not really sure I even believe in the concept - perfection that is. Something about it seems flawed!

 

Is the ART world really a meritocracy, or is it as corrupt, biased, and prejudicial as any other plutocracy?

 

I keep going back to Ralph Steiner's quote in Bruce Grant's Profile:

 

"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity; be intensely yourself. Don’t try to be outstanding; don’t try to be a success; don’t try to do pictures for others to look at — just please yourself."

 

Amen!

 

I like chaos theory and scientificated stuff!

 

Most of my images are based on true stories!

 

I'm allowed to touch the art in most museums!

 

 

Some Favorite movies:

 

Boogie Woogie / Sucker Punch / Blade Runner / Kick-Ass / Kill Bill I / Kill Bill II / Watchmen / Girl With The Dragon Tattoo / Ghost World / Sin City: A Dame To Kill For / Around the Block - 2013 / Mulholland Dr. - 2001 / The Diary of A Teenage Girl / Sicario / The Brady Bunch Movie 1995 / No Country for Old Men / 2001 A Space Oddity / Alien / Prometheus / Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) / Mean Gurls (2004) / Hustle & Flow (2005) / The Councilor (2013) / My Cousin Vinny (1992) / DUNE / The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy / Interstellar

 

Some Favorite quotes:

 

For something to be beautiful, it doesn't have to be pretty. — Rei Kawakubo

 

Don't believe everything you think.

(seen on a bumper sticker)

 

"Protect me from what I want." Jenny Holzer - Truisms

 

"I say play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing, even if it takes them fifteen or twenty years."

— Thelonious Monk

 

"The thing that’s important to know is that you never know.

You’re always sort of feeling your way."

— Diane Arbus

 

"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult." - Warren Buffett

 

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." - Writer Harlan Ellison

 

Most admired/influential artists include:

 

Ross Bleckner / Gerhard Richter / Koons / Cy Twombly / Manuel Branco / Cindy Sherman / Antony Gormley / Picasso / Brice Marden / Christo / Kenneth Noland / Alberto Giacometti / Hans Hoffmann / David Lynch / Dennis Potter / David Salle / Arnaldo Pomodoro / Georg Baselitz /Sigmar Polke / Ilya Shtutsa (he's here at Flickr and is a true contemporary master). Currently lives in St.Petersburg, Russia. you heard it from me 1st - I like to think I discovered him!

 

Some Favorite music/groups include:

Cocteau Twins

Kali Uchis

Tame Impala

Boy Harsher

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I listen to a lot of Witch House:

 

Bow Church - Sulfur

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgYJymV-O7I

 

± FLESH - I Come From Salem ±

ΔXIUS LIИK - RΞBØЯИ [Guest Mix]

+ DEATHKID - Holy +

± DVЯK SE▲ x †LOΛΣΓS† - losing You ±

Fraunhofer Diffraction ╺╸ ...Into Nothingness

LORN - All Corrupt Everything

Witch House Mix VI

± CHVRN - Faith ±

BLVCK CEILING ╺╸ 25 Bucks Cobainen (BITWVLF Remix)

SOKOS - s p i t

 

Snakehips - Forever (Pt. II) [Official Video] ft. Kaleem Taylor

Rihanna - Sledgehammer

The Police - Spirits in the Material World

 

Sia - Chandelier

 

Brode Dalle

 

Little Dragon - Little Man

 

Dead Can Dance - Kiko HD

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWGKwNt9NY8

one of the greatest videos of all time!

 

Massive Attack - Girl I Love You

 

SLAVES - Beauty Quest

 

Wayne Static - Assassins of Youth

 

Wolf Alice - Moaning Lisa Smile

 

Crystal Castles - Alice Glass

The Beatles - Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Clock DVA - Eternity In Paris

Crystal Castles - Baptism (Lollapalooza 2017)

Crystal Castles - Teach Her How to Hunt & Empathy (Lollapalooza 2017)

Kali Uchis - After The Storm ft. Tyler, The Creator, Bootsy Collins

Kimbra (everything she does or ever will do)

Little Dragon - Feather (Live)

Purity Ring - Begin Again (Live on KEXP)

anything by the SAVAGES

like SAVAGES LIVE AT ELECTROWERKZ - I AM HERE

or Savages - She Will (Live on KEXP)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kim-REn8ecg

Local Heroes SW9 - Stabbed In The Heart Again

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpzzMibelGU&t=27s

 

flickr fun-buddies:

 

www.flickr.com/fun/buddies.gne

 

I encourage all people of middle earth to leave comments

 

Making art and capturing beauty are essential to life.

 

I like visionaries. I like the cutting edge of everything creative. I'm a student of the classics but admire those who break new ground; artists like Andres Serrano, Thomas Struth, Edward Burtynsky, Cy Twombly, and Francis Bacon. I'm a painter and sculptor as well as a photographer but like the immediacy of taking pictures. I look for beauty in what’s ugly. I look for color, patterns, and texture. I look for settings that have a story to tell. I experiment, I play. I look for order in chaos. I specialize in abstraction and what’s ephemeral. I’m a hopeless romantic but I suppose you’d never know it looking at my photography. I like pushing the envelope of what a photograph can be. Something that approaches painting or sculpture. Images that evoke some intellectual level of form or color or context. Images as found objects. I like how complex behavior and/or patterns arise from simpler rules.

 

I'm from Boston, MA.

 

I have doubts about my photography all the time.

 

I worked for many years as an R&D Lab Tech for Polaroid at their now-defunct Chemical Operations facility in Waltham MA.

 

I attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University through the late ’70s. Some famous alumni include Cy Twombly and the Starn Twins. One of my early painting instructors was the son of the late Bauhaus painter Lyonel Feininger (Lux).

 

I left art school believing it had little or nothing to do with creating art. You either create art or you don’t.

 

I’m addicted to the study and mystery of beauty and what it can be.

 

I have exquisite taste in everything.

 

Check out my favorites by other artists.

 

Flickriver:

 

www.flickriver.com/photos/manuelbranco/

 

Also check out my Flickr Hive Mind & Fluidr pages:

www.flickriver.com/photos/manuelbranco/

www.flickriver.com/search/manuelbranco/recent/

 

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If you find yourself returning to my sets a time and again, consider a testimonial!

 

BUY MY PRINTS!

 

Thank you for viewing my work!

 

Purchasing prints:

 

Go to saatchionline:

 

www.saatchiart.com/olo00so

 

or contact me directly if you would like to order prints of my work - mbmanray@msn.com

 

Remember me. I am always with you thinking of you - thinking of you all.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgraQ-xkp4&list=RDGMEMJQXQAm...