Who is Laguz the Quantum Mystic? To answer this we have to go to a time in my early childhood, to the moment that sparked in me a passion for the unknowable. I was around 7, sitting on the floor in my mom's room, playing with my TMNT toys, my mom flipped through channels looking for something to watch while she worked on her sewing, stopping at "Star Wars", it was the scene where Yoda is training Luke saying " For my ally is the force, and a powerful ally it is, life creates it, makes it grow, its energy surrounds us, binds us, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter". I was captivated, the moment fixed in my being, and so I was initiated into the mysteries by none other than master Yoda itself. Growing up I then looked everywhere I could for mystical knowledge, for seeking through meditation and practices that promised the transcendental experience that would enlighten me, that would unite me with "The Force". Unbeknownst to me then, art was that practice, I was already there, in the eternal moment, every time I sat, and "I" was diluted in the drawing. Art was the process of transformation, the emotional alchemy that turned the struggles of my daily life into pure gold. But, why "Laguz"? Laguz is one of the runes in the futhark alphabet, used centuries ago in northern Europe. It means Water, and it's accompanied by a poem: " The ocean seems interminable to men if they venture on the rolling bark, and the waves of the sea terrify them, and the stallion of the deep heeds not its bridle." When I was around 19 I felt like my signature "Martin" took me away from the deep contemplation of the paintings I had made, it felt heavy like an anchor into the "real world", I also thought it a bit egotistical, like it was yelling " Look at me! I made this!" and I felt that wasn't entirely true, where was this "I" that made this? So I decided to create a symbol that wouldn't feel so present and loud and experimented with some ideas, but nothing felt quite right, I could still feel too much "ME" in those symbols. One day, on my constant quest for mystical knowledge hidden in the local bookstore, I stumbled upon a "Celtic Rune dictionary", I felt very attracted by the symbols and decided to take it home. Along with it came a bag of runes and once in my room I opened the soft black velvet bag they came in and reached inside and pulled out a random stone, "Laguz". The description in the book explained it was the rune of Water, the Moon, inspiration, the subconscious, the rune of artists, the flow, and that it was the rune #21. All of these things were very important to me, I've talked to the moon since I was a child, I was an artist, dreams and the subconscious were the source of everything mystical, it meant water and I was a Pisces zodiac sign, and on top of it all, it was rune #21, the number of the day I had been born. So I took it as a sign from the universe and decided to adopt the symbol of Laguz, two simple lines, as the signature on my paintings. It was perfect, it didn't bear the burden of "Me" it was "it" Laguz who had done the paintings, it had been IT who'd done it, I was merely its tool. And it's this feeling of anonymity and namelessness what sits at the core of my being, my perspective on life, the philosophy I live by, the way I go about my days, and the processes that go into to creation of the art. One could call it "Non-Being" or "Non-Doing" the Taoists call "Wu Wei", action without deliberation. Freedom from purpose. Why The Quantum Mystic though? A mystic is a person who seeks through contemplation and self-surrender to feel unity with the absolute, the Dao, the Force, God, or whatever else you may call it. And the Quantum, (to the modern mystic) is just the term that science uses to describe what others call The Dao, or Master Yoda called "The Force" . I became fond of the term years ago, as I was struggling with trusting my belief in some of the core teachings of these ancient philosophies. My logical mind rebelled at ideas it found unreasonable. What was this "No separation" nonsense? I could clearly see the divide between me and others, a separation between the ten thousand things. But when the student is ready the teacher appears, and I stumbled onto Quantum Mechanics and quickly became obsessed with its discoveries through experiments that seemed to point to the same answers that the enlightened masters of old spoke about. There is no separation. There are no others, there is no I. As Erwin Schrodinger said: "Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe" And so Laguz the Quantum Mystic came to be, and more of a name is a reminder to stay on the path, and if I stray, a calling to come back. This site is a part of my life journey, where I intend to share with the world my beloved artwork in unique fantasy art prints available for everyone!