I'm taking a digital sabbatical between January and February, unless there's a major solar storm, or a media post to post.  That means I won't be on social media such as Facebook, however, but I am always happy to  hear from people through my Contact page on this ...Read more>

Within the last 72 hours, soldier's cheered the closing of the gates and the end of the Iraq War which has destroyed more than the lives of nearly 4,840 soldiers (4,500 American) plus a conservatively reported 100,000 Iraqi lives.
It destroyed our trust in our capacity to overcome our nature. ...Read more>

Enough words. The breathtaking beauty of the Nightblooming Cereus ( Hylocereus undatus) on our front porch brings me back to what matters. It's so startling in its perfection, it's temporary existence, which is here and gone in one night. Like us.  Who needs a temple?

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I want to post Richard Flanagan's very brave and eloquent extract from his closing address at the 2011 Melbourne Writers' Festival- ‘The Australian Disease: The Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-freedom’ . It's strange, ten years ago the reasoning behind this piece wouldn't be under such ...Read more>

I'm always grateful to Edge for bringing up things the mainstream media don't focus on. This is an important post from Edge.org, Code Is Law , introduced by influential German journalist and essayist Frank Schirrmacher [11.7.11]. It's a bit hard to ...Read more>

The painting I am working on is one of those 'gateway' images that set a tone for the following paintings. I am immersed in an usual combination of music to get into it. Combining 70s punks and disco in the laboratory ...Read more>

Preparing a canvas surface, for me, is a lot like archaeology. These are some of the under coat surfaces in my new paintings. Developing stories beneath the foreground is one of the most important aspects of my painting. The research I do, that immersion, happens here. There is a ...Read more>

I Stumbled onto these old skits from The Carol Burnett Show . After a week of news that got ludicrous, I felt a need to watch adults being honest about being silly.  The multiple Emmy winning Carol Burnett Show had a hugely successful eleven-year run which aired ...Read more>

I was recently asked about a range of views in an interview and some of those questions made me ask myself in what ways art and politics interact. I think they have always been part of the social commentary, reflecting the emotions and perceptions around them. ...Read more>

A few months ago my friend Amanda Brown and I did a photo shoot of portraits where I got to explore some of the time-warp feelings I have been having for the last year.  While I am a 2 dimensional creator, I do use some of the techniques ...Read more>

Without a doubt, al-Awlaki was not a man of peace. In a current Politico article on the latest targeted killing by US drones, all the questions that disturb me about drone warfare are asked, but regrettably not answered with respect to the lessons of ...Read more>

The Sun, the helios , its affect on Earth is a particular area of study called heliophysics . And NASA have quite a bit of this research on it's education websites. Solar flares have become an area of my interest lately. It is ...Read more>

OK, so I never knew Einstein, but I can't imagine he would object to being challenged. He'd probably relish it. As  Don Howard, a lecturer on Einstein at Notre Dame University said on  NPR, "this is the glory of science" (Experiments are allowed, even encouraged, to challenge ...Read more>

Recently I clambered into a black taxi cab in London. The driver remembered me as having had a nice long chat with him the last time I was in his cab (I seem to recall his thesis at that time was the London riots as a communist or Tory ...Read more>

Thank you to Wik Wikholm for his post about my art in the September Media section of  GLBTQ  - the world's largest encyclopedia of lgbtq culture.
Carl Gopal Applies Queer Lens to Tough Problems   (Posted by: Wik Wikholm on 09/12/11)
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Selected articles from the 9/11 blogosphere : Memories are still vivid, but we need to declare the end of the 9/11 era by Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian UK , 06/09/11. Mark the September 11 anniversary ...Read more>

I often use the term 'gateway image"to describe a painting which is a bridge between one series and the next. Most of the time it is not that clean, because you travel a road and the landscape changes along the way.  So there are not really any breaks ...Read more>

These photographs were taken in the last 3 days when I travelled with a friend to Albany in Western Australia's South West region. This particular muddy creek held a strange fascination as it seemed to reflect a world within a world. I have added them to my wall of ...Read more>

I realised that this painting has not been posted in my Visual Diary so here it is. It is a small canvas (20x20cm) called Kandahar Kandy , and is a companion piece to Nothing Like A Drone (both Feb 2011 completed). I merged a Hollywood character ...Read more>

“A Jewish visionary will see visions of the seven heavens because his religious imagination is stocked with these particular symbols. Buddhists see various images of Buddha and Bodhisattvas; Christians visualise the Virgin Mary. ...Read more>

The contemporary trend for global conflict is the dehumanisation of warfare and, in particular, extrajurisdictional killings by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones). Recently The Washington Post reported on the Aspen Security Conference, where CBS News and 60 Minutes Correspondent ...Read more>

Tikkun daily ( Tikkun magazine's daily blog) interviewed me about my art and, as always with good interviews, made me think better about my painting and how (and why) I go about what I do. Please take the time to visit and read their high ...Read more>

Today, as I was listening on the bus to Greg and Michael's performance version of the Song of Roland (see my post)  I was also contemplating the role of memory. It still amazes me the way Michael’s translations are helping to generate content, ...Read more>

Michael Newth is a marvelous much-published translator of the medieval French epic poetry known as chansons de geste . I have blogged extensively about how I have used this rare period of literature as an inpirational trigger in my paintings for the last 2 years. One of ...Read more>

It is a real change in era when great painters like Leonora Carrington and now, Indian painter Maqbool Fida Hussain, pass out of the present and into the past. his death at 95, so close to Carrington's, underscores this vacuum. As much a victim of right-wing Hindu religious extremism as ...Read more>

The truly great painter, lady and surrealist Leonora Carrington died this week aged 94. She remains my most inspired vision of the world that I seek in all my paintings. Her journey as an artist, the way of it, the sense of it, and the world of her paintings, ...Read more>

WAR POETRY 2011 has updated its page with new poems by soldiers including veterans of the Iraq conflict. I found Gerardo Mena's poem "So I was a coffin" both disturbing and moving. I read it several times. Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad's poems evokes another lens ...Read more>

Whoever thought we would ever feel nostalgic about the Nuremburg Trials ? Well, times change don't they? They get foggy. Violent. When I heard about the shot that killed Bin Laden, this song came to mind from my teen years. I thought about what being human ...Read more>

This portfolio book contains a collection of images from my website for people who like to carry their art and poetry in their duffle bag. You can now purchase a book online featuring paintings from The Assassination of Judy Garland - A Metaphorical Portrait of America Part 1. Paintings 2008-10 . ...Read more>

In 1966, about 9 months before I entered the world , TIME magazine ran a cover story "Is God Dead?". It's still the question. By today's standards it seems naïve, given the pluralism of gods and beliefs. But in the ...Read more>

On a different note, I found some early images from the 1980s, lost works i guess. For many years I don't think I thought much of a my own work, and so bits and pieces never got catalogued. Quite a few have just gone missing. The second painting here, i ...Read more>

Lumet died aged 86 on April 9, 2011 in his residence in Manhattan, New York from lymphoma. His  1976 film Network remains for me the most precient, prophetic film of the time. How close have we come in today's information saturated environment to lead ...Read more>

Quite unbelievably, some people didn't know about this. It's not our best moment. I'm posting this information for anyne who's missed it. I have no other words on this one rght now, but I ask you to learn more about it.    More Studio ...Read more>

I've updated this entry because people thought I was dumping the broader themes (I'm not) but some paintings are smaller chapters. Only during an exhibition do I really understand how it fits in. This one is less Judy and more dark matter, God and Pentagon's black budget. It's a ...Read more>

Hey, great to be one of the 3 'honourable mentions' in the Spring 2011 issue of Visual Overture Magazin e in Atlanta, GA, USA. (out February 18th).  My painting featured is called There is Nothing Like a Drone, from my exhibition series The Assassination ...Read more>

The next few months the work is in transition as I start a new series. It's going to be really vague and really weired (what's new you say). The working title is Scribes of Divinity.

Here is one of the new canvases. In this image (which ...Read more>

Please donate to the Queensland Flood Appeal
http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html
...Read more>

This is a repost  of this work as I completed the paintings. Small canvases (5x). They developed when I first started reading the chansons de geste translations by Michael Newth in Sydney. He has since become a good friend and I am grateful for his inspired ...Read more>

On the one hand I embrace my research on technology, but at the same time, I seem stubbornly out of time. I keep painting. I keep reading that "death of painting" was all a big mistake, and suddenly there are a ton of editorials embracing paint. While I am ...Read more>

I attach this video which just seems to capture the strange world of 2010.
I met some incredibly interesting people and made new friends in 2010 like chansons de geste translator and musician Michael Newth in Sydney; and Roberto from the musical project ...Read more>