I was born on October 28th, 1950. My father was a country preacher and we lived in a dairy-farm community in Wisconsin. I was raised in a nurturing home with loving parents and two adorable older sisters. When I was six years old my father joined the United States Army as a chaplain, and the family moved to France. During this time, we traveled throughout many parts of Europe. My parents enjoyed museums and cathedrals and I was able to experience the highest expressions of religious and secular art, as well as the customs of many different cultures.

 

To go from the cow barns of Wisconsin to the gold and marble of the Vatican, to see Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses, were mind-opening experiences for a boy. I still have photographic memories of the veins on the marble arms of Moses.

 

Since then, I have lived in many parts of the United States. I first attended college at Clemson University, South Carolina, from 1969 to 1971. I took classes in literature and writing, as the focus of my studies made their progression from engineering to architecture and then finally to art studio, always following the trail that led to greater and greater freedom. Writing and painting came together and were to become my traveling companions, going hand in hand beautifully throughout my life.

 

In the early 1980’s I continued my education at the University of California Santa Barbara, and throughout the rest of the ’80s at Chico State University, Chico, California. Through the years I kept reading about the art of writing as I wrote stories and poetry. At one point I sent a book off to five publishers before I saw its many flaws and shelved it, knowing a better book loomed in the future.

 

In 1996 I returned to the beautiful skies and landscapes of New Mexico. I pulled away from the gallery art scene and went deep into a contemplative life—a life of open-eyed meditation, 8 to 12 hours a day and often more. Out of this exploration, a rich new way of looking at my world arose. Besides objects becoming more alive and energetic in my perception, a sense of this world existing in a “unified field”—a quantum field of energy, as well as the world existing in a dimension arose, perceptions that parallel the theories expounded in quantum physics, but from an experiential point of view.

 

All this I began to write about as well as express in my paintings, putting both together in an educational art website (www.perception4u.com ). Through the exercises on the website, I was attempting to open up to others their own revelations of deeper levels of perception. (Over time a substantial number of paintings were created. I knew that one day they could be the source of future exhibits.)

 

In 2013 I began writing and illustrating “Tō•bé and the River Is” to express the ideas that I was communicating in my website but from a more emotional point of view. People could learn through the experiences of the protagonist, “Tō•bé.” My book was published in 2016. It is full of living metaphor. The “River Is” is itself a metaphor for the matrix of the unified field that surrounds us.

 

The book has already won two Global eBook Awards, one for illustrations, The New Apple Book Award, followed by the Ben Franklin Award and the Nautilus Book Award. The last award was especially meaningful because it was in the Memoir Category, which means that they understood it is not just a made-up fairytale. It is based on experience. And I surmised, if the reader realizes it is based on my experiences, they will be more likely to make it real for themselves. 

 

I am now living in Mendocino, California and enjoying the morning and evening walks on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The hours in between are often spent writing or painting, either on location or in my studio. More recently I have been putting together an exhibit of my large body of paintings to be shown in museums and other venues as it travels across the country. The aim of the exhibit is to encourage people to explore a new vision of their world through the coming together of my paintings and the words of theoretical quantum physicists and other scientists, some of whom I have had long and in-depth conversations with. Their words, appearing next to my paintings, will give an insight into a deeper interpretation of this world our limited senses are showing us. The idea is to have people leave the exhibit and step out into a new world—a world they perhaps have never imagined existed.

 

The power of writing and art is incredible. One example of this a lady told me about the other day was as she was driving through the southwest, the scene before her suddenly “exploded open” to an energetic level—of a life permeating the scene and radiating from all the forms of the landscape; she experienced the reality of the quantum unified field. She said that what triggered that experience was seeing one of my landscape paintings two days before.

 

May you enjoy reading my book, as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was a wonderful experience.

 

Micah

 

 

PS You can view my paintings on my art website at www.perception4u.com.