~Painting the richness of Life!~
*** ALL TEXT AND IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF RUSH COLE. NO PART OF THIS WEBSITE MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM RUSH COLE.
***"Gallery-Wrapped" describes images on stretched canvas painted on all four sides, making additional framing unnecessary.***
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"I am a recovered child and pet abuser," said no one ever. Not until artist, Rush Cole, encounters the dark past blocking her every happiness and success does she accept that she has not escaped the generational cycle of causing pain to those who are dependent on her. It's the shock of being qualified to write those words that sends Cole searching for ways of healing supposedly incurable emotional wounds.
Having fled, years earlier, from memories of her own agonizing childhood, Rush now finds them waiting for her as an adult. Realizing that she is repeating, with her own child and pet, at least part of what was done to her when she was too young to protect herself, Cole determines to change the ancient, dysfunctional behavior patterns handed down to her.
Forced back to the land of her earliest nightmares, and mired in a long goodbye to a loveless marriage, the newly-single mother and artist battles despair, depression, unpredictable bouts of PTSD, and a powerful old urge to kill herself.
From the Aleutian Islands to the American Midwest; to the Old West, onward to Eastern Europe and back again, no matter where Cole goes, her shadow arrives there first. Gradually, she understands that there is nowhere she can hide from what she has only ever wanted to forget.
Devastated as everything that she has built either collapses, or is weirdly destroyed, the only path opening to Cole is the same one that others have always warned her not to take. Ultimately, Rush must turn and face the very thing that she has never been able to outrun.
This is her story.
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DREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY : The memoir that finally broke the silence...
*FIRST Edition: Signed, Hardcover, Full Color Book Jacket, Matching Full Color Bookmark.
600 pages. FREE Shipping in continental U.S.
Price: $55
A LIMITED EDITION retrospective collection of images
created by this versatile and accomplished fine artist,
spanning twenty-one years: 1979 ~ 2000.
Brimming with full-color reproductions of paintings by Rush Cole, and including never before published drawings, artworks, and personal photographs from the artist's very private collection.
The "ART OF THE JOURNEY" Collection of healing images
forms the nucleus of this singular volume.
More than 170 illustrations (138 color)
10" x 10", hardcover with full color dust jacket, Numbered & Signed LIMITED EDITION Certificate Of Authenticity,
Matching book mark, 160 pages: $100.00 + $22.00 shipping in continental US.
EXCERPT: Artist/Author's Note:
"Fair warning to all art lovers and readers: I doubt if you’ve ever encountered an art book like this one. If you’re looking for a breezy little, unemotional treatise about some of the images I’ve produced thus far in my life, you’ll need to pass on this volume. Pretending that all was hunky-dory in my existence was the biggest mistake I ever made; bar none, one that served only those who were intent on keeping me blind, deaf, and stupid. Now that I’ve awakened, they are the very cretins who no longer have a vote of any kind about how I live. None of them are welcome in my reality ever again.
Yes, Virginia, we really do get to decide such things for ourselves, in addition to creating strong boundaries and enforcing them, if necessary. In my case, because I ascended to the judge’s seat in my own courtroom so late in life, I find that I do, indeed, need to also be the armed guard patrolling the borderlines and shooting to kill without thinking twice. Otherwise, the miscreants, who continue asserting that they were always right to attack and treat me in such abominable ways, will go on hurling themselves against my defenses. Maybe a pile of bodies, stacked where their miserable lives end, and my ever-improving one begins, will have them reconsidering whether they really want to mess with me again.
I must say that transforming myself, from always playing the role of an abject victim, to showing up as the clear and present danger in my own world is rather thrilling. I can only wish that I’d risen on my hind legs and started throwing lethal punches a lot sooner."
All images and text copyright Rush Cole.
"THE PILLOW I DREAM ON"
20" x 16", oil on canvas panel, unframed
Copyright Rush Cole
$3900
Free shipping in continental U.S.