Click on images to enlarge them. Scroll down to review the full content of the blog and to learn the story behind this original oil painting. "As The Sirens Sweetly Sang."

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Visit ONLI STUDIOS: Collectors, customers, clients, critics and curators are all welcomed.
While each image is unique to Onli's Rhythmistic approach its insightful and fun to see the assortment of major art movements and landmark painters suggested by his kindred works.

My Rhythmistic oil triptych, "As The Sirens Sweetly Sang" was recently recognized in an international seascape themed fine art contest held in Florida. Here is a comment from the event host.

Dear Artist:

I wanted to personally thank you for your submissions and participation in to our highly successful “Seascapes” Art Exhibition. Attached is a Certificate that you may want to print out for your professional references and for your portfolio. Since the opening of the “Seascapes” Exhibition and with our subsequent promotions, we have been averaging 500+ visits a day to the website. Out of those visitors, 68% of them are new visitors to the website. Hopefully, this will result in an increase in traffic to your website as well.

Your art is outstanding and you should be very proud that yours was chosen out of 503 entries.

This is the link to purchase the coffee table sampler book "No Evils". It contains Rhythmistic fine art and illustrations dealing with the Three Chinese Monkey's inspired concept of Seeing, Hearing & Speaking No Evil. The images are paired with the artist's written musings about this theme and a few other related images added to round out this highly collectable portfolio.

I am an illustrator. It is my career path, life style and passion. I usually refer to myself as an Artist. They both fit. My style is Rhythmistic. My work is heavily influenced by my early years as a major market illustrator for clients like Holt, Rinehart & Winston, WGN, Playboy, MODE Avant Garde, The Paris Metro and Chicago Magazine. I want folks to be able to relate to the work while I stretch out in some esoteric personal voyage of vision, design principles and future-primif constructs. Therefore I tend to freely use the human figure as the anchor. The base. The messenger, if you will. Each of my works are abstractions with a literal reference point. Each work is connected in a serial model or collection which works well in gallery exhibitions or publications such as the very ambitious "No Evils" Rhythmistic Portfolio book. Viewing art in a gallery setting is like hearing music in a live performance. In each case ideas, energies and expression flows from the source, through the audience and back to the source establishing a circle of enlightened feedback and warm communication on a variety of human levels.

Americans used to celebrate illustrators as stars. Art Stars! This can still be done. Who are your favorite living illustrators? It is still a very competitive field. Illustrator's names were household words at one point in American history. People often debated which illustrator was the best liked or most talented. The most skilled, talented, unique or effective illustrators often had loyal supporters. Publishing houses built financial empires based on this work. Most religions of the World have been reinforced by the power of illustration to provide the most compelling of mental images upon which beliefs may be templated. Governments even made laws to control illustrations. I think at its worst this is called censorship.

Even still their works gave fans, customers, collectors, curators, critics and educators the visual realization, conection and reference for so many ideas, fantasies, facts and beliefs. Illustrations become works of fine art when the appreciator embraces them via acquisition. My Rhythmistic original artworks make tremendous accents and additions to any personal or professional collection of fine art during these dynamic economic times.

Given this I will say it again...."I am an illustrator".

I am quoted as saying "Ownership is the highest form of appreciation".

Illustrati Member

il·lus·tra·tion (l-strshn)

n.

• artwork that helps make something clear or attractive
• exemplification: showing by example
• example: an item of information that is typical of a class or group; "this patient provides a typical example of the syndrome"; "there is an example on page 10"
• a visual representation (a picture or diagram) that is used make some subject more pleasing or easier to understand

As we enter the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Hare & Pisces, I am looking to share my recent Rhythmistic watercolor illustrations that interpret and combine aspects of the Western and Chinese horoscopes into a fantasy based psychedelic visual excursion of allegory, color, pattern and a little metaphysics thrown in. There is a linage of personality traits associated in the two zodiac systems.

Here is a treat tease peek at three of the collection of twelve illustrations. Each is about 22 inches by 30 inches. Painted on archival heavy grade acid free paper. Great for collectors, curators and critics alike. This is the Year of The Phoenix & Virgo.

Here we have the Year of The Monkey and Leo. The collection scheduled for a later Spring exhibition and lecture dealing with the two Horoscopes at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I will post the invitation and related details in March of 2011. This collection and my "No Evils"collection are both inspired by traditional Chinese concepts that I have filtered through a Rhythmistic lens of future-primitifisms.

Rhythmistic visual artist Turtel Onli was featured for Chicago Artists Month 2010 along with other exhibiting artists at the East Bank Artists Building of Bridgeport in Chicago at 1200 West 35th Street. Things are changing to make this area the new national artistic hot spot for collectors and creative folks. This photo of Onli, with his portrayal of females as goddesses in the Rhythmistic "No Evils" painting, was shot by Julieta Alverez for the article, "the Art Side of Bridgeport", ran in the October edition of Extra News which is the largest bilingual newspaper in Chicago.

Onli hosts a monthly Open Studio 5pm to 10pm the 3rd Friday of each month for interested collectors, curators and critics. Enter The East Bank Artists Building via 34th and Racine, in Chicago, parking lot. Call 773-726-1610 for entrance or appointments.

While doing my annual "Year In Review" I am grateful to have partnered with the White Sox Chapter of the Baseball Wives Charitable Foundation, The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, The New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, and The Artists of East Bank to produce a group art exhibition/fundraiser in Sept. of 2010 called "Save Our Shores".

FOX News: Save Our Shores Art Exhibit

My Rhythmistic oil painting "As The Sirens Sweetly Sang" is a supportive tribute to the effort to help, clean up, and restore life for the victims of the Gulf oil spill. Also, I was channeling lyrics creating an otherworldly homage to the super group rock band Cream's song, "Tales of Brave Ulysses", and the painting "Gulf Stream" by the great illustrator/artist, Winslow Homer. I intend to keep detailing and crafting this painting, in the tradition of the old masters, such as N.C. Whyeth, until someone acquires it. It will be a work in progress and well worth my asking price per 773-726-1610 or email: onli@sbcglobal.net.

For educational purposes here are the lyrics by Martin Sharp, arranged and sung by Jack Bruce, lead singer & bass player for Cream:

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

The painting is a 120 inch by 30 inch oils on canvas triptych looking for the right collector, curator, museum, or gallery to showcase or own.

Even great Rhythmistic art deserves a good home in support of a good cause.

Megan Thomas, of the Chicago White Sox Baseball Wives Charitable Organization , was on hand to interview various artists at the "Save Our Shores" benefit art opening gala, at the East Bank Artist Building near Cellular Field, for FOX-TV. Each section of the triptych is 40 inches wide by 30 inches high with a two inch museum profile. They are painted in quality oils on heavy museum grade gesso primed canvas.

Panel 1. Features the Daughter "See No Evil Siren" tending to a Pelican that is soiled and suffering from the spilled crude oiled waters. Modeled by Malitha. One may notice the end panels have a little symmetrical homage to Hiroshige's "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" block print thrown in.

Panel 2. Features the Two-tailed / four-armed mutated "Shiva Siren", inspired by the legendary deity Shiva, who dances to stamp out the sources of evil, to confront the violence of the Sun while washing away the Evil, or pollutants, in the waters that were restrained by the boom cables placed on the surface of the spill area. I went sailing a few times off Chicago in Lake Michigan this summer per the nice invitation of my good neighbor Dr. Craig Cunningham. This gave me a chance to experience and study the power and active nature of water, waves and currents. This helped me to reduce them into visual rhythms in this ambitious Rhythmistic triptych.

Panel 3. The "Mother Speak No Evil Siren" tending to a choking Dolphin who is struggeling to communicate and survive in the murky waters. The healing tenderness in this treatment comes by way of an ink painting-study an 11 year old Onli did of Da Vinci's "Madonna of the Rocks". This was modeled by Power who used to lead an all female band for Prince.

"Often when folks view my Rhythmistic work they instantly make a strong unconscious connection. The sudden power and inner truth of this non-verbal contact often surprises them. Then they frequently pull away in a bit of uneasiness due to the emergence of thought and emotions flowing in new ways. Future-primitif rivers form our shared collective. A few short circuit on the idea that I am the messenger and not someone else or some other designated source of their preference. Some recover to collect the work. Others move on to reflect upon the value of that exchange. Images can be provocative. I have been watching this process being played out since my early childhood as a wunderkind art maker.

Searching for a ready and open mind Rhythmism is still the art movement that bridges the 20th & 21st Centuries' diverse globalism, shifting traditions, energetic powers, cultural transitions, reconstructive families and emerging economies. Its embrace of the future-primitif in all of us. Each branch of the tree of humanity has a primary root that reaches into its future. Our mutual organic core. The human that creates, thinks and adapts. The master of the machine. Distilled and expressed by the hand of artists. From the cave to the new wave. The hand of man. The will of you. Valued by you. Reflective of you.

There is motion out there. There is a place for Rhythmism. That place is among the greats. With the powerful who amass collections of icons and trophies that reflect and protect their sense of self. Of personal power.

When in the dawn of my career I successfully "stalked" Miles Davis, The Rolling Stones, Alice Coltrane, WGN, Motown and Playboy, and more. The rewards and spoils of this helped to finance my BFA & MAAT degrees from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This practice also gave me the wonderful opportunity to touch people as a teacher / therapist while testing and crafting a wide array of Rhythmistic concepts in fine, applied or commercial art. My Rhythmistic art can be found in the collections of the Cool Globes, The Johnson Publishing Company, The Chicago Children's Museum, the DuSable Museum and a growing list of private collections. My exhibitions have inspired positive critical acclaim in published reviews in the New York Times, The New Art Examiner, the Chicago Sun Times, The Paris Metro and others. Not to mention the many artists that were influenced along the way. Hiding in plain view this art movement grows.

Let the hunt renew. Big Game is only brought down by a Big Gun.

I can no longer accept pause as a way of life. A habit. Time to leave the studio. Time to safari packing my Big One. Rhythmism lives!!!!

Point being, game-changing is the way to stay. These New Age Masterpieces should be owned by the Masterful. The emergent masters of their own lives and destinies. The masters of lives, forces, and change. The fair market exchange for my Rhythmistic fine art or intellectual properties can work.

My spirit animals are here to guide me: The Dragon becomes one with the Phoenix. The Turtle shows his wares. The Cat stalks his prey as the Dolphin surveys the way. "Boom dat!!!!!"

"Thanks for collecting some of my very best efforts. It addresses the above in you too."

2011 will be the best year yet for Onli Studios.