The Art of Illumination
The Illumined Heart, 2024
30 x 30 in.
Fashioned after the exquisite treasure bindings that cover medieval illuminated manuscripts, this unique artwork from The New Book of Kells series is made with mixed media: ink, pencil, and natural earth & mineral pigments on canvas, adorned with gold and silver leaf, Swarovski crystals, and semi-precious stones.
the artist’s journey
Song composed for Michael by his son
Kabir Green
“Love is a bridge to everything.”
For visionary Aquarian artist Michael Green, the artist’s journey is also a soul journey—a lifelong exploration of this line from 13th c. Sufi mystic-poet Rumi who found the way to open the heart through beauty.
Green's multi-media artwork is both visually stunning and significant — from the first book created on a personal computer (Zen and the Art of the Macintosh) to art for The Illuminated Rumi and The Illuminated Hafiz, created with Coleman Barks and Robert Bly. His original fine art can transport a viewer to a medieval Celtic monastery, the mystical forest of the unicorn, or into a sustainable future, where people are living in what he calls The Afterculture.
In your light, I learn how to love.
In your beauty,
how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
-Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi
Trans. Coleman Barks
American Visionary Art Museum Exhibit
Healing and the Art of Compassion
(and the Lack Thereof!)
Oct. 9, 2021 - Sep. 4, 2022
RECENT BOOKS
Love Poems for the Journey to Light
translations by Coleman Barks, Robert Bly,
Meher Baba, Peter Brooks,
foreword by Omid Safi, and essays by Jonathan Granoff
Sounds True, 2019
