Interview with artist Eden Maxwell —

1. Who are you and what do you do?
I’m a fine artist, author, animal rights and abused children advocate, and kite flier of some note. I paint the invisible—by way of my intuition channeled from the Third Eye.

“The true artist has no medium.”

— SO SAID THE ZEN MASTER

6. What are the best responses you have had to your work?
“Eden Maxwell’s art is brilliant; he’s the real thing, a true creator.”
—Mary Anne Bartley, Artist-in-Residence: Villanova University, WHYY, PBS

“Eden Maxwell’s art is among the most compelling I have ever seen. He is in the good company of Picasso and Kandinsky.”
—Oscar (Oz) Janiger, psychiatrist | art patron

7. What advice would you give to other artists?
I wrote a groundbreaking primer for creators, An Artist Empowered: Define and Establish your Value as an Artist-Now. Rejection is not failure; failure is when you give up on your vision.

“An Artist Empowered is an intriguing book that uses real-life anecdotes, thought-provoking reflections, and humorous insights to explore how to create and lead a life worth living. The powerful and timeless principles make this an evocative page-turner. Read it and reap.”
—Sam Horn, author of POP! Stand Out in any Crowd and Tongue Fu!

“This is a wonderful book that both encourages and surprises. Perfect for all creative people, wherever they may be along their path.”
—Dr. Eric Maisel, America’s foremost creativity coach and the author of more than thirty books.

A few insights and clarifications for both artists and patrons

What is fine Art?
Remember that cave painters of over 40,000 years ago didn’t attend art school.
There is among many a misunderstanding about the value of digital artwork.

Digital Art vs Traditional Art —
Let me ask you a question that will provide a clear perspective on art media. If you’ve finished a thrilling novel, a page turner, a story that you connected with, would it matter whether the author wrote it on a computer, a typewriter, by longhand or dictated the story into a recorder? It’s the content that matters, not the method of transcription. The same principle applies to a painting and the artist.

Patrons: It’s not the medium; it’s where the art comes from that matters. I am an intuitive channel in the Zen sense who in a leap of faith transcends thinking to access the divine fire of the Collective Unconscious: the wellspring of all great art.

Fine art digitally made is not the product of loading a paint app onto a computer, pressing a key, and then the app creates a work of original fine art. It is the artist who creates with whatever gift and with whatever medium. It is the sapient artist who makes art, not the media or the computer, which are merely tools.

A lesson from a renaissance master —
Leonardo da Vinci had worked with egg tempera that was long lasting, but the downside was that it dried too fast. When genius Leonardo learned of a rich new medium from Northern Europe called oils that would dry slowly, he immediately adopted oils into his toolkit allowing him the luxury of time to rework his paintings as needed and for weeks. Leonardo would have also embraced the digital medium.

My fine art digital paintings are the result of twenty-five years of experimentation with the premier digital art application: Corel Painter. I channel the transcendental Zen flow of universal intuition from my pen stylus into the quantum world of the computer, and then into an original fine art print using museum quality materials.

Painting, n.:  “The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.”
— AMBROSE BIERCE