Zoeken in deze blog

Guido Vermeulen's mail art envelopes are like worlds into themselves and at the same time they are part of the much larger whole.

(a comment by NANCY BELL SCOTT, USA, on the IUOMA network)

Guido's paintings are like finding images in the clouds
(a comment by Kathleen D. Johnson, USA, on IUOMA)

Guido does not paint monsters but spirits and ghosts, full of love, tenderness and compassion
(LIZA LEYLA during a conversation, Belgium)

His ability to express emotions through painting is a beautiful gift. Allowing oneself to feel sadness is the most direct route through grief. His paintings feel peaceful and kind.

(STEPHEN WALKER, USA)


My life is shifting... Your work is intangible, ethereal, cosmically rewarding. i eat it up & savor it like a great sandwich! It made my day!
(Lisa PEREZ, USA, on IUOMA)

Thank you for the TALISMAN painting on the envelope. It is real cool and creepy at the same time. I haven’t seen a piece of abstract capture such as pain and emotion so well since I visited the museum of art in Toledo. Bravo!
(Sarah Jo Pender, USA, from the Indiana Women’s Prison)

I suppose you could characterize Guido's painting style as expressionist. I know he is very interested in dreams as a source for art and poetry, and these particular chapter pages seem like shadowy dream corridors filled with shifting images and scenes. The Michaux quotes work as a counterpoint, Guido's art is taking over when the limits of language have been reached.
(De Villo Sloan, USA, on my tribute pages to Henri Michaux, see LAMUSAR blog)

Guido’s art expressions are always poems and they show us the reality of our real faces and souls (Mariana Serban, Romania)

His titles have both inspired and educated me (Alicia Starr, USA)

donderdag 30 juni 2011

SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS 2




A small painted envelope I mailed to Heike Sackmann in Germany.

IN THE SINGING CORNERS OF MY MIND: FEAR (s)



A large painted envelope I mailed to Maria Fedorchuk in Russia, inspired by the song FEAR (Lily Allen). Some people are surprised I like Lily Allen, she's a pop idol with "jolly sounding songs" but if you listen to the lyrics you know she's a F ****** "submarine". She does social satire on a grand scale. The song FUCK YOU is an uppercut to the Bush administration and to all bigots and racists (but the music is pleasant and nice and happy even). The song Fear beats any Madonna lyrics.
Some lines here:
I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don't care about clever
I don't care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they're trying to find them
I'll take off my clothes and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that's how you get famous
and so on

My advise is not only to dance to Lily Allen songs but also to listen to her words, she's better today than Bob Dylan in his quest for a christian god, folks.
Lily is a rebel goddess with humor and that's how I like them !!
Oh yes, Maria has a project on "Music Lovers for Mail Art" and started a group on IUOMA around that idea.

The SPIRITS OF A LIBRARY




A large painted envelope I mailed to Lynda Jo Thornbrugh in the USA.

WALL WRITINGS




A small painted envelope I mailed to Natalia Kachanova in Russia.

ECRITURES SINGERIES



A small painted envelope I mailed to Patricia Eloy in France.

DON'T BE A BIRD IN AN QUARIUM



A small painted envelope standard landscape size I mailed to Karin Greenwood in South Africa.
Title refers to a great book of poetry by one of my buddies: Jan Perquy. His second poetry book was called "A bird in an aquarium". It was a metaphor for his condition: being gay and living in a psychiatric asylum. Jan wanted to fit in and be part of the normal aquarium and of course he was not and never will be. Made me reflect on the difference of perceptions. In general artists like to be "birds in the aquarium" unless you have a serious problem and are forced to live a life in the marge of society, that changes everything... It's not a question of adaptation, Jan will never adapt, it's a longing of being part of a world that puts him in the nuthouse for reasons I don't have to explain here and I can assure you Jan writes the most incredible poems in Belgium I've ever had the opportunity to read. My conclusion: society sucks, the world sucks, what's new(s) under the sun ???

I HAVE THE COSMIC BLUES



A small painted envelope standard landscape size I mailed to Silvija Radzeviciute in Lithuania.
Title refers to the second official album of Janis Joplin, still one of the best albums ever made!

CONVERSATIONS ON GODDESSES (on top of a mountain near Athens)



A small painted envelope I mailed to Emily Townsend, USA.
Emily has a project on goddesses (ATC size, but I'm no big fan of that size, so this is postcard size painting, sorry... no, not sorry ...)

zondag 26 juni 2011

WAVES OF COLOUR GUIDE ME TO ...



A small painted envelope I mailed to Jelena Kostica in Belgrade, Serbia.

THE WAY TO THE LOCKSMITH



A small painted envelope I mailed to Martina P. in Croatia.

THE MONKEY AND THE INK TREE



A small painted envelope I mailed to Julie Mc Bee in Canada.

STILL KNOCKING ON HEAVEN's DOOR



A small painted envelope I mailed to Tara Badcock in Tasmania, Australia.

RETURN OF THE SALT MIRAGES



A small painted envelope I mailed to Leanne Armstrong in Canada.

PREGNANT OF EXPECTATIONS



A large painted envelope I mailed to Vaida Sirusaité in Lithuania.

IN THE SNOW STORM



A small painted envelope I mailed to Linda Ward in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

IN THE SAND STORM



A small painted envelope I mailed to Diane Keys in Elgin, Illinois, USA.

Désirs d'évasion



A small painted envelope I mailed to Eric Bruth in Montrouge, France.

MAIL ART FOR CANCER AWARENESS



A Large painted envelope I mailed to the Eve-n-Odd Gallery in St Petersburg, Florida, USA.
For Jennifer, Ria, Betty and Branka.

BIKE RACER ON MONKEY MOUNTAIN



A small painted envelope I mailed to Zavick aka Supadog, the artist with a red bicycle in Cape Town, South Africa.

AT THE PARTY CONFEREENCE



A small painted envelope I mailed to Eniko Lini in Romania.

vrijdag 24 juni 2011

BIRD LOOKING FOR A PARADISE LOST



B-side of a large painted envelope I mailed to Rob Grant in Australia. I've published the A-side on The book of Ann (2BE or not 2BE part of the circle of love)

woensdag 22 juni 2011

TWISTERsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss



Large painted envelope I mailed to Alicia Starr in the USA.

LOVE TRIANGLE



Large painted envelope I mailed to Margaret Founds in the USA.

When they say REPENT, I wonder what they MEANT!



Small painted envelope I mailed to John M. Bennett in the USA.
Title refers to lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song.

THE MOON FOLLOWERS



Small painted envelope I mailed to Svetlana Pesetskaya in Russia.

SANDY, FOLLOW THAT DREAM!



Small painted envelope I mailed to Sandy Dyas in the USA.

LET'S COLLABORATE TOGETHER



Small painted envelope I mailed to Stefano Fossiant Sini in Italy. Project "the world".

C'EST BEAU CE RETOUR DU PRINTEMPS



Small painted envelope I mailed to Chantal Tahiti in France.

TO BE or IS IT ALSO SO DIFFICULT TO FIND A PUBLIC PHONE BOOT WHERE YOU LIVE?





Small painted envelope I mailed to Ginny Lloyd in the USA together with 3 photo's of a phone boot performance in my flat. See the blog:
http://kiekjesdief.blogspot.com
This is an extra photo with a dried grass Native Americans use in cleansing rituals, they burn the grass and it has a delicious smell, forgot the name!
I received this type of dried grass and from Marilyn Dammann and from Lavona Sherarts.

MONARCH BUTTERFLY



Original papercut I put in the book "Messages from the rainforest" I mailed to Cheryl Penn in South Africa.

TOMB OF SECRET LOVERS and THE SOUL OF THEIR BONES



Photo of an installation in my garden, ceramic piece by Louise Lavallee de Tournay surrounded by bones and stones by Guido Vermeulen.
Installation for the occasion of the project "is there life before death / mail me your soul" proposed by "E", Utopian Embassy in France.
More photos will be published on the blog
http://kiekjesdief.blogspot.com

dinsdag 21 juni 2011

zondag 19 juni 2011

THE 3 MOTHERS



Large woodglue painted envelope for the cinema project of Angela Gattuso.
Okay this needs some explanation. The work is not linked with a movie but with a trilogy of horror movies made by the Italian director Dario Argento, a real genius, but not for the fainthearted ones.
He worked on the theme of the 3 mothers, symbols of all what is evil, pain and suffering in the universe:
MATER LACHRYMARUM
MATER SUSPIRIORUM
MATER TENEBRARUM
These figures remind us of the Greec Erinyen or the Roman Furiae but not completely because these goddesses of revenge persecuted the guilty while the mothers persecute the innocent ones, so they are perhaps closer to the witches of fate in MacBeth.
They are pure evil and Argento made some incredible movies based on these characters:
SUSPIRA (in 1977)
INFERNO (in 1980)
LA TERZA MADRE aka The Mother of Tears (in 2007). With the last movie Dargento had no or little conflict with censorship; so the murders in this one are quite brutal and awful to watch!
The characters of the mothers are rooted in old litterature (the work of Thomas de Quincey, 1785-1859). In a way I like that these monsters are portrayed as mothers.
We have a sugarcoated version of mothers in our culture while reality is sometimes different. Because of that society cannot cope with mother monsters.
Mothers killing their own babies, mothers helping their pedophile husbands to rape and murder children. The case of the wife of Dutroux is "exemplary" on that level.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU REMEMBER?!



Small painted envelope I mailed to Roger Dewint in Belgium.
A great inquisitory line in the movie "The big sleep" (with Bogart & Bacall)
Really Angela, why did you propose a project on movies? Now I can't stop!

TRY A LITTLE "T"



Small painted envelope I mailed to Patricia Eloy in France for her project "the spirit of ZEN".
T stands for tenderness of course. Sometimes certain songs pop up in my head. Memory works like a boomerang bang bang !!!

THEY DID NOT AGREE ON WHICH ROAD TO FOLLOW



Small painted envelope I mailed to Rod Summers in The Netherlands.
(almost a social political satire I guess)

THE SNAKE AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE



Small painted envelope I mailed to Henning Mittendorf in Germany to announce him the development of the blog http://cuereghemsnake.blogspot.com
A documentation on my millennium project (1999-2000) "Signs & Stones & Snakes".
To view all of Hemi's contributions click on the label "snake pits in Frankfurt am Main".

ROCK TALK



Small painted envelope I mailed to Snappy in Canada.

OPEN THE GATE OF ANCIENT MEMORIES (IT'S GOOD FOR YOUR SOUL)



Large painted envelope, conceived for the projects "is there life before death / mail me your soul" from E, Utopian Embassy in France.

MOPSY's DREAMS



Small painted envelope I mailed to Linda Ward in the USA. She has a project on "dogs".
Today I visited with my brother Dirk his oldest son Karel in his new home.
He lives there together with his girlfriend Vanessa. Mopsy is the 10 year old dog of Vanessa. He does not look like the dog in the painting but that's not the point!

LET'S GO TO THE MOVIES!



Small painted envelope I mailed to Karen Champlin in the USA.
Angela Gattuso continues to inspire me!

IT'S QUITE IMPOSSIBLE TO FOLLOW THE MOTION OF YOUNG HEARTS IN LOVE



Small painted envelope I mailed to Laxmy Prasad Shahi in Nepal.
What made me mail this work to Laxmy? I saw on his blog he wanted to marry a European woman. Well, Laxmy, many European men want to marry Asian women. We live in a turmoil of crazy relations, I guess.

I LIKE FLYING KITES AT NIGHT



Small painted envelope I mailed to Valentine Mark Herman in France.
Is this cryptic? Not when flying a kite is a rebellious act against dictatorship!

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?



Small painted envelope I mailed to Jacky Charmouan in France.
Part of a serial of works brought together in a folder "living in a society"
Voluntarism is regarded as bad today. In politics it's even considered as a crime.
The lack of trust between people will suffocate a society, slowly but with great efficiency.

HEY, YOU LOOK REALLY GREAT TONIGHT!



Small painted envelope I mailed to Karin Greenwood in South Africa.
The funny title (the cheapest pick up line of any boy or girl) came spontaneously to me when I finished the work. I like the colours, forms and mood of this envelope, though I know some will dislike it.