Check Out Matt Blake’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Blake.

Hi Matt, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have always felt like I was born with the ability to draw. Spurred on by my grade school art teacher, Mr. O’Neill, I carried this vocation to be a professional artist with me seriously up until my junior year in college.

I abandoned my Bachelor of Fine Arts pursuits at the University of Missouri–Columbia to get into what I thought would be a more lucrative pursuit of Graphic Design/Art Direction in the Advertising industry.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and I am glad I chose the path I did. I am grateful for a consistent career in the world of Advertising, Marketing and Graphic Design.

(You can check out my advertising Website here GaudeteDevelopment.com.)

It has given me opportunities to free my mind to explore and absorb knowledge, from the clients I have serviced to all the categories of information from anywhere the world wide web leads me.

Because of this Advertising background, I can not only paint, but I also imply the explosive world of digital art to my palette. This two-pronged media approach that I am focused on right now keeps a fresh, endless supply of ideas I have ‘Tuned Into’ and stored in my fairly unique brain.

This way of thinking is Generalist Knowledge, or knowing more than a little about a wide variety of topics… the opposite of a Specialized, or the ‘Siloed’, modern approach. This ‘Synthesizing of Multiple Disciplines’ is more of how the ancient Egyptians viewed the world.  They built their belief systems around it.

This thinking has helped me conjure, manifest, or ‘TuneInto’ some very unique and hard-to-define philosophies. The world we live in is in dire need of solutions that actually help solve the myriad of problems and dilemmas we have created for ourselves.

I used to think my ideas and philosophies were strange and too weird for public consumption.

But the state of reality and the world we live in today… I don’t think that at all anymore.

I am not going to say the world is not better than it ever has been… it probably is.  But our civilization, as advanced and modern as we think it is, and the way we treat this world and each other is, for lack of a better word, shameful.

As an ‘Artist First’, I have adopted the calling of a philosopher named Terence McKenna, who said (paraphrasing) that it is a self-selected artist’s task to find the way forward by journeying into ‘The Other’ to bring back solutions. And if the Artist cannot find the way, than the way cannot be found.

I consider myself one of these self-selected Artists, and I am confident that the Arts, design and architecture can contribute to the solving of these crises of our modern civilization, if the powers that be allow it.

That’s the big question.

It is shameful that we even have to ask if that is the case – worldwide. I believe that those who hold the status quo captive by their vested interest can be convinced that they’ve won the Monopoly game, and now is a good time to start over with a different set of parameters – a much more inclusive one.

Kansas City can be pivotal in helping turn this tide – if we have the willpower to do the right thing and start using our brains correctly. It is my hope to be the “Tip of the Spear” to help lead & contribute to  that charge.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not. But has it been a smooth road for the vast majority of people in this challenging world?

Heck no.

In this evolving Gig Economy, the overwhelming focus is ‘The Droids are Taking our Jobs’, meaning too many people, and too little opportunity. This and the avoidance by giant corporations of paying employees healthcare, and letting the government and the people pick up the tab. This has poisoned the soil for business growth in general and for doing the right thing ‘in the name of Capitalism’. These flaws need to be addressed immediately if we are going to rebound out of this predicament we’ve created for ourselves.

We all have our obstacles. Like everyone,  I have had many thrown in my way and ones that I have placed there myself. Fear of Success comes to mind, an odd one if I say so myself.  I do have a self-portrait titled ‘King of Procrastination’ for example… but I painted that in my 20s, and have out-grown that for the most part.

I do let the ‘Perfect get in the way of the Good’.  I have adopted the ‘Lean Startup’ model of just putting something out there and launch / learn / adapt course moving forward.  In the olden days of print, any mistake was super-costly. Now in the Electronic Age,  you make a typo in the text or code, you just fix it.

I also want to address how people fail upwards in this business climate. We also reward those with low ethics and morals – the classic ‘Nice Guys Finishing Last’ motif. It’s not an excuse –  just a fact. Those are big obstacles and challenges in a general sense.

Also how people ghost you and don’t return phone calls. I try not to do that, but more and more people hide behind their inbox and voicemails and are not courteous… I think that attitude comes from a lack of leadership at the top. When our leaders are crappy, others take that as a queue that they don’t need to be professional as well.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
First of all, I have only shown my work publicly a hand full of times. I would say I specialize in provocative topics.  I do not paint pretty or popular images. I want my artwork and concepts to make people think and jostle their belief systems into finding a different perspective. I also have a series that is autobiographical a la Frida Kahlo-esque. My painting style is Dali meets Rembrandt meets Magritte – dark surrealism.

My Digital work focuses in on the Golden Ratio (also called the divine proportion) and Fibonacci Sequence  which are part of the Eternal Mathematical Principles they represent. These are incorporated into the fractal behaviors of Mandelbrot Set, the [frame{work}] for not only how our cell phones work, the motion computer graphics have made special effects become so realistic, and how financial markets and money behave.

More importantly, research shows these eternal principles govern how actual events play out and how consciousness is actually structured, in my humble opinion.

You can check out more details about this intriguing topic by visiting my new Art and Philosophy website Reality-Redesign.com.  I’m planning a podcast and really pushing the concepts behind it in the not-to-distant future.

I don’t know if I am known for anything, really.  I guess being funny or my sense of humor… upon which I put a very high value.  I am an acquired taste for sure – I would say most of my friends would say I’m good in small and infrequent doses.

Being in the Cannabis space I think surprised many of my associates – because I am not a purveyor or a regular connoisseur of Cannabis – at least it is not my focus. I guess my claim to fame there is when I am under the influence of it I get way higher than everyone else – my third eye really kicks into gear and I hallucinate intensely. Which is a total blast..!  This gives me access to the infinite creative source of love and compassion. It is very hard to articulate though – and I drive everyone insane trying to explain it.

So I guess I am known for that as well.

I do intensely believe in the freedom to make the choice to partake in any reality altering substance. I think we should ritualize it all as sacred.  This will allow those that want to participate in imbibing in mind-altering substances the opportunuty to educate themselves beforehand, like getting a driver’s license.  We should build a mechanism around the education, monetization and  legislation of it. Then we can properly administer it to its full capacity.  This will help raise the consciousness of our civilization in general as well as help those who are in physical and mental pain, suffering from a wide variety of ailments.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods globally. Instead of more endless diagnosis, I am a proponent of taking a deep breath, sitting down and collectively coming up with a better way to be – a Better Story, for all creatures great and small.  I think that will be easy to do as well, if we have the correct [Mind{Set}] and the will power to do it.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Covid-19 has fractured friendships, marriages, killed and bankrupted loved ones.

It has changed reality for many in the worst way.  However, it is teaching humanity a few big lessons.  It has removed the veil of perception that authority has your best interests at heart (it doesn’t) and that our traditional media tells us the truth about things (it doesn’t). It has also helped point out what is truly important in this life – how we treat and care for each other.

That being said, propaganda is being used at an unbelievable level by just about every influential media channel associated with the status quo and establishment. They do this to keep the masses confused and quarreling – with each other, instead of putting the onus on their own horrible track record and devious intentions.

I don’t think I need to prove that – it has become obvious to just about everyone.

That isn’t said lightly.  I am a researcher and someone who places high value upon the truth.  But this road we have traveled together, now globally, is littered with example after example of deception, trickery and lies to get us to act and behave within the realm of fear, blame and division.

Why is this so? Covid-19 is a classic divide and conquer technique. The reasoning is not exact; rather it has been developed by a small group of elites who think they need to ‘do something’.  Based upon their preconceived notion, it  could be too many people, or that they own us and can do whatever they want to us for fun and profit, or some other crazy opinion they have concocted.

In my own personal philosophy that I am rolling out, this is my biggest question – why is it this way?  Can’t there be a more sane way of doing things?

Or is this the lesson we as a global society are here to learn collectively?

If you have ever seen the movie Time Bandits, that is the pivotal (there’s that word again, could be important!) question the lead character Kevin asks the Supreme Being at the end of the movie… ‘Why do we have to have Evil?’

I am asking the same question today – because it seems to be everywhere. It is ridiculous, and I know I am not alone in thinking that.  Shockingly, people are too scared to stand up and question this whole ordeal.

I am not scared, and I hope to inspire others not to be either.

To quote comedian Bill Hicks, ‘Life is just a ride.’ Click the link and you’ll get the idea.

If life is just a ride, then many of the conflicts and divisions we are so focused on fall by the wayside.  In short, we have the power to make this particular reality a lot more fun, enjoyable, and more inclusive – the way it #Should be.

And we can do it – together.  How? We need to reconnect with the actual spirit that lives within the eternal mathematical principles and constants that govern this realm.  Let those principles and constants give us the guidelines and guard rails to help keep our human natures in check. These answers are what the Arts & design communities show us every day.

Let’s collectively graduate to this next level of Being. 

Pricing:

• dispensaries on MOCannaHub – $150/quarter for 2021
• Products and Extractions – quoted
• Look for NFTs on reality-reDesign.com soon
• ‘People’ – Oil on Canvas $5K
• All other Art prices Quoted

Contact Info:

• Email: mblake@gaudetedevelopment.com, blakeArt@reality-redesign.com
• Websites: Cannabis App:  www.MOCannaHub.com, Ad Agency:   www.gaudetedevelopment.com,  Art Site:  www.Reality-ReDesign.com
• Instagram: @mocannahub, @blakeArt
• Facebook: @mocannahub, @blakeArt
• Twitter: @mocannahub @blameblakeArt @realityredesig1
• Other: https://vimeo.com/gaudete

Image Credits:
All images by blakeArt®