ith great pleasure I welcome you to the second edition of Art Visionary Magazine. Embarking with a very small distribution network and only a handful of subscribers on release of our debut issue, we have in the course of the past year steadily established a distribution network which now reaches out across Australia and beyond to overseas interest, including New Zealand, the United States, England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and selected Asian locations.

In addition to this growing distribution network, the subscriptions and interest continues to come in every day. We are close to being sold out of Issue 1 and expect Issue 2 to do much better, especially so with the Art Visionary web presence that has been up on the worldwide web since June of 1999.

In addition to the magazine, Art Visionary has also expanded its operations to include a variety of exciting new projects. We have begun to deal privately again in the work of selected Australian artists, of which there will be an extensive feature on our web site under ‘Galerie Art Visionary’.

Secondly, Art Visionary has built a substantial international art collection, which includes Fantastic, Outsider and Visionary art that will be used to promote these movements via exhibitions domestically and abroad over the coming years.

We are also in the last promising stages of developing what may be our first major public exhibition of the AV collection in conjunction with Alan Sisley, director of the Orange Regional Gallery in NSW, Australia, scheduled for early 2001, at this stage of the process, pending the approval of their board of directors. More information concerning the Orange Gallery exhibition and other exhibitions promoting works from the AV collection will soon be available on the AV website under The Collection Art Visionary.

Next, the long awaited book featuring the life and work of visionary artist Felix Tuszynski is now to be published in two languages (English and Polish) by the Plock Art Museum in Poland, and should be available for sale by March 2000 through the Museum and Art Visionary. Last but not least, an exciting new book project on the life and work of the Australian Fantastic Realist artist, Wolfgang Grasse, who is featured in this issue, is currently in the works. More information on this project will be periodically placed on the web site pending its release.

As most of you will have noticed, there has been a price increase for Art Visionary. Having to offset the high cost of expanding the magazine to double its previous size to 64 pages, having added colour features to its interior and now with the introduction of Australia’s new goods and services tax coming into effect this year, we have had no choice but to do the inevitable and adjust our prices. In this issue you will find 13 feature articles by established and rising artists and an expanded book and magazine review section, with highlights of this issue being the feature interview on Beksinski, conducted by Piotr Nycek. Beksinski, as many of you would know, rarely grants interviews, so this is an exclusive that in itself should make this issue a collector’s item, as with the Bruno Weber article featuring his amazing fantastic environment explored and written by H.R. Giger. So, until the next issue, scheduled for late 2000, enjoy this second release and please visit the web site for further information on Art Visionary.

I would like to thank the artists, writers, galleries, publishers, collectors and all art enthusiasts who have supported and believed in the Art Visionary project over the last year-and-a-half. Without you, the magazine could not have enjoyed such rapid growth and success, as it has to date.

A special thanks to Christian De Boeck in South Africa, of the Fantastic Art Centre for all the time and hard work he has given to undertaking extensive research in finding new leads and contacts, but especially so for the creation and maintenance of the Art Visionary web site which has helped enormously in gaining the overwhelming interest and support it enjoys today from so many people around the world.

This issue is dedicated to three of the most important people in my life: my great grandmother and mentor, Marjorie Schuck, the very successful owner/founder of the Valkerie Press in the United States. Yours has been a lasting inspiration and I am grateful for the coming together of our mutual path. To my mother Pamela Djiovanidis. Those long nights of Jungian exchange and general ‛oddness’ were not only a lot of fun but fundamental in forming the person that I am today. Lastly, to my dear wife and best friend, Jenny, who with great patience and understanding has supported and assisted with all my projects creatively and emotionally since the very beginning. Thank you so much!

DAMIAN MICHAELS