Art4AllPeople
Bridge to the Soul: The Art of Healing Exhibition
Artist: Richard Bacon
Flower of Life: Community Earth Blessings
Plastic, metal, string, paper
$5000
Why is Art Healing?
The origin of art & healing is rooted in humankind’s ancient history. Before we even had a word for art, the earliest artists were in fact the tribal shaman and healers. By creating cave paintings, masks, costumes, jewelry, fetishes, rituals and stories early shaman were evoking the power of healing by connecting to the spirits of animals, plants and deities. Both cosmic and terrestrial divine energies were called upon for courage, action, transformation and abundance. As we study our collective past, the items that inform us the most about ancient civilizations is their art and their ability to create art.
Personally, the process of creating art has been very cathartic for me and for those I help through art therapy. For example, in 2003 a huge wildfire storm burned my neighborhood in San Diego. For months afterward I was experiencing nightmares and anxiety due to the trauma. To heal my post-traumatic stress I turned to my painting practice as a way to release the tragic images that were haunting my sub-consciousness. By downloading the fear, anger and frustration of living through such a horrific experience, my fine art practice helped me to not only recover, but inspired others to find creative ways of healing too.
Art has the ability to transform our thinking, perspective and understanding of the world around us, including the reality within us. Self-healing of emotional issues can happen through the process of art making. By listening to our inner voice and allowing our eternal Spirit to express, art creates a bridge between the known and the yet to be discovered. I have witnessed the remarkable transformation of many individuals from various backgrounds who have used the universal language of art to heal their relationship with themselves and their communities.
$5000
Richard Bacon Artist Statement
My passion as an artist draws from observing, communing, understanding and co-creating with nature. In my paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs, I combine emotional color relationships, flowing visual textures, and spatial reference as transference of my own personal meaning and energy into our interconnected universal zymology.
My artistic expression is revealed in lucid moments of awareness where I am open, listening intentionally and responding to my outer world’s connection to my inner soulscape. In my work I use multiple expressive layers of various mixed media that represent the multi-layered, multi-dimensional, interconnected union between body, mind, spirit and community.
My art emerges from a subconscious knowing that allows dialogue with abstraction, mystery and spiritual consciousness where interpretive meaning shifts with continuous examination. Blending references to natural landscapes, the human form, and details found from personal experience becomes the palette of my artistic search, bringing my own true nature to stand in the truth of expressed Creation.
Artist Bio
Richard K. Bacon was born on the Fourth of July in 1960 and grew up in Syracuse, New York. He is the eldest son in a family of eight. His first art exhibition was at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse in 1978 during his senior year of high school. Richard received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design in 1982, majoring in Graphic Design. For 18 years, he worked in corporate marketing communications in Boston, Mass. and owned his own design firm, Bacon Design Group, Inc. from 1989-2000. In addition to providing commercial art and marketing services to a wide variety of clients, Richard continued to explore his love for making fine art in his own free time.
In 1994, Richard received support from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to travel, study and create Japanese style art in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan. The experience inspired him to establish a greeting card business of his nature photography called EdenArts. Relocating to San Diego, California, in 2000, to pursue fine arts as a fulltime profession, Richard became a member of The Spanish Village Art Center and won awards for his paintings at the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego Watercolor Society and the Valley Center Arts Association. To help support his fine arts career, Richard then became Head of the Computer Graphic Design Department at Coleman College in 2002.
After a wildfire storm destroyed his neighborhood in southern California, Richard purchased a garden center in Washington State in 2005 and converted it into an inspirational Nature & Art Center. Working with art associations, recovering addicts, battered women, the local homeless shelter and high school teens-at-risk, Richard developed EcoArt Therapy as an important healing modality for helping others to expand self-awareness and encourage self-healing.
In 2008, he enrolled at John F. Kennedy University’s School of Holistic Studies in the Dept. of Arts & Consciousness in Berkeley, California and received a Master’s Degree in Transformative Arts in 2010. In addition to refining and expanding his fine arts .
Bridge to the Soul: The Art of Healing Exhibition
Artist: Richard Bacon
Flower of Life: Community Earth Blessings
Plastic, metal, string, paper
$5000
Why is Art Healing?
The origin of art & healing is rooted in humankind’s ancient history. Before we even had a word for art, the earliest artists were in fact the tribal shaman and healers. By creating cave paintings, masks, costumes, jewelry, fetishes, rituals and stories early shaman were evoking the power of healing by connecting to the spirits of animals, plants and deities. Both cosmic and terrestrial divine energies were called upon for courage, action, transformation and abundance. As we study our collective past, the items that inform us the most about ancient civilizations is their art and their ability to create art.
Personally, the process of creating art has been very cathartic for me and for those I help through art therapy. For example, in 2003 a huge wildfire storm burned my neighborhood in San Diego. For months afterward I was experiencing nightmares and anxiety due to the trauma. To heal my post-traumatic stress I turned to my painting practice as a way to release the tragic images that were haunting my sub-consciousness. By downloading the fear, anger and frustration of living through such a horrific experience, my fine art practice helped me to not only recover, but inspired others to find creative ways of healing too.
Art has the ability to transform our thinking, perspective and understanding of the world around us, including the reality within us. Self-healing of emotional issues can happen through the process of art making. By listening to our inner voice and allowing our eternal Spirit to express, art creates a bridge between the known and the yet to be discovered. I have witnessed the remarkable transformation of many individuals from various backgrounds who have used the universal language of art to heal their relationship with themselves and their communities.
$5000
Richard Bacon Artist Statement
My passion as an artist draws from observing, communing, understanding and co-creating with nature. In my paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs, I combine emotional color relationships, flowing visual textures, and spatial reference as transference of my own personal meaning and energy into our interconnected universal zymology.
My artistic expression is revealed in lucid moments of awareness where I am open, listening intentionally and responding to my outer world’s connection to my inner soulscape. In my work I use multiple expressive layers of various mixed media that represent the multi-layered, multi-dimensional, interconnected union between body, mind, spirit and community.
My art emerges from a subconscious knowing that allows dialogue with abstraction, mystery and spiritual consciousness where interpretive meaning shifts with continuous examination. Blending references to natural landscapes, the human form, and details found from personal experience becomes the palette of my artistic search, bringing my own true nature to stand in the truth of expressed Creation.
Artist Bio
Richard K. Bacon was born on the Fourth of July in 1960 and grew up in Syracuse, New York. He is the eldest son in a family of eight. His first art exhibition was at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse in 1978 during his senior year of high school. Richard received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design in 1982, majoring in Graphic Design. For 18 years, he worked in corporate marketing communications in Boston, Mass. and owned his own design firm, Bacon Design Group, Inc. from 1989-2000. In addition to providing commercial art and marketing services to a wide variety of clients, Richard continued to explore his love for making fine art in his own free time.
In 1994, Richard received support from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to travel, study and create Japanese style art in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan. The experience inspired him to establish a greeting card business of his nature photography called EdenArts. Relocating to San Diego, California, in 2000, to pursue fine arts as a fulltime profession, Richard became a member of The Spanish Village Art Center and won awards for his paintings at the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego Watercolor Society and the Valley Center Arts Association. To help support his fine arts career, Richard then became Head of the Computer Graphic Design Department at Coleman College in 2002.
After a wildfire storm destroyed his neighborhood in southern California, Richard purchased a garden center in Washington State in 2005 and converted it into an inspirational Nature & Art Center. Working with art associations, recovering addicts, battered women, the local homeless shelter and high school teens-at-risk, Richard developed EcoArt Therapy as an important healing modality for helping others to expand self-awareness and encourage self-healing.
In 2008, he enrolled at John F. Kennedy University’s School of Holistic Studies in the Dept. of Arts & Consciousness in Berkeley, California and received a Master’s Degree in Transformative Arts in 2010. In addition to refining and expanding his fine arts .