Welcome to my Dreamworlds - Scott Augutis

        
                                                                          
Hi !  Welcome to my site !

  There's a lot to look at - have fun.
 

• Much of the essence of my artwork comes from my dreams and I am basically self-taught.  I have borrowed some techniques from other artists and teachers over the years, but not many.  For a time I used dark backgrounds to create the feeling I often have in dreams - that of being focused on the local happenings while a perceptual void exists beyond.  More recently, I have been able to capture a similar feeling without so much dark emptiness.

My dreams are very vivid, realistic, intense, hyper and often very long - a sense of adventure and possibility always overcomes any fear aspects.  As I accumulated memories of my dreams from early childhood on, I eventually started to feel a sense of familiarity - that many dreams contained parts of others and that the happenings were actually local (in a kind of space) to other dreams from other days.  It almost felt like I was returning to specific places or somehow building a virtual world in which to experience my nocturnal adventures.  This was the birth of the Dreamworlds concept - and you'll see it's influence permeates most of my work and interests.

• For most of my paintings, I use oils since I can create smooth surfaces - like thoughts flowing through the mind.  For drawing, I prefer medium hardness graphite on smooth Penbristol paper to achieve more of the same liquidity.  In ink, I like fine, black ball-point pens so I can create intricate detail and sharp, intense, even dangerous looking images.   I have quite a few works in acrylic including some of my first paintings - I return to the medium every so often since oil painting can get messy. 
   
• I like rich, complex and ancient things, evidence of earlier civilizations, the mixing of organic and cybernetic components, deep philosophies and humor.  The possibility of there being much more than is immediately apparent always hovers in the back of my mind.   My interest in the sciences from my father and my thoughts on interlaced philosophies often enter my artwork in actuality, concept or through representation.   For so long my paintings and photographs were void of animate life.  Lately I am including people in my surreal worlds more with an emphasis on mixing beauty with the fantastic.
   
• Some of my early influences were the Marvel comic book Man-Thing and the movie Time-Bandits.    Some movies I would be proud to call my own are Aliens, Dune, Jurassic Park and more recently The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies.   My favorite fellow artists include Boris Vallejo, Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, Michael Whelan, John Pitre, Roger Dean and Jacek Yerka as well as the brothers (Rand and Robyn Miller) who conceived of the computer game Myst and it's decendants.
   
• I have a degree in Physics and enjoy Philosophy, Psychology and collecting rocks, fossils and antiques.   I still dabble in theoretical physics and I guess I could be considered an amateur Paleontologist to some degree.   I have practiced Lucid Dreaming for many years - I can fly, shoot bolts of electricity from my fingertips, pass through walls - and if I pinch myself when I'm dreaming, it hurts  : )  I believe in maintaining a strong mind and body so I work out and take vitamins, trace minerals and herbs.  I enjoy making my friends laugh and surprising them with the speed of my comebacks.
   
• I have some recurrent themes to my artwork: floating platforms, crystal bubbles, balloons and caverns.  Some are just objects that I had an affinity for creating at a young age and others have some deep meaning that still eludes me.  I often try to find real objects, places and landscapes that mirror my artistic creations - and I am often surprisingly successful.  I have found some pretty dreamy places and amazing formations right here in the real world.  My rock and fossil hunting trips often bring me to very unusual places which possess a dreamlike quality.  Some places I have visited make me feel like I am the first person in a long time to have been there - and it seems, there, that anything might be possible.  Other places I visit just look incredible.  At that point, I can mix my interest in art with my interest in nature through photography.  I take after my mother in that I am always snapping pictures - trying to capture special moments in time or beautiful aspects of people and places.  I also try to use as few special tricks or filters as possible to achieve my images.  And I seldom crop the pictures - you see what I saw.  You'll find many images I've captured of wondrous surroundings on the various pages of my site and then also many images of my fossil finds  - whether they be personal finds or acquisitions through Ebay and the internet.
   
• I started collecting Dinosaur fossils a number of years ago - about 6 I think.  As a child I knew all their names, so this is the adult realization of a childhood dream.  I've been to Montana three times now to hunt in the badlands for teeth and bones - the landscape there is such that seeing a living dinosaur running across the fossils really wouldn't be too surprising.  I hope to also hunt in Morocco soon - much of my fossil collection focuses on the dinosaurs of that area with an emphasis on Spinosaurus aegypticus from Jurassic Park III.  My fossils and photographs, lately, have comprised the majority of new additions to my site, but I have hundreds of ideas and sketches for new art projects including many 3 dimensional creations - I'm just waiting for the proper inspiration to bring them all to life.  Then they will be presented here for the world to see.  It was always a dream of mine to be able to show my artwork to anyone who wanted to look - and the internet has given that possibility to me.   One day I would like to leave my job and travel the world taking pictures, collecting things and creating artwork and then display and sell my creations and finds through this site from wherever I may be - stopping on occasion to spend time in a spacious home in secluded woods.

  I hope you enjoy (or continue to enjoy) my artwork, my fossils and all the other aspects of my dreamworlds.  Much has changed over the past 7 years since Dreamworlds.org and I first arrived online - and much has stayed the same.   Thanks for stopping by.
   

  Still more is coming...
   

  Scott

  
  
  saugutis@aol.com
   

Copyright © 2000-2006 Scott Augutis

03/11/10 09:50:43 PM