The Limits Of Spontaneity

At the basis of my work is a commitment to surrendering to the automatic process, and therein all the marks I make are completely spontaneous. This is a decision, and one which puts limits on my work that I work within. As with all works of art, limits are necessary opportunities for discovery. This is well known, but perhaps in the case of my work the limits are not so obvious. And as such many will inaccurately assume a more common process of artistic formulation to what I do.

What spontaneity means formally is that I make my composition not based on placement on the picture plane, but on the depth of the plane, going into the surface. When marking I do not consider where the next mark will go but surrender to the movement that will come. This was a very challenging thing to master because it means loss of control over the image. It also means a loss of the dialog of decision stroke per stoke in cultivating a picture, an act which I have always found very engrossing. The surrender is provocative in itself, and why do it, but so very different than the continual consideration of placement in the more common practice. And still it is something that requires me to return my attention to consistently.

I fortunately discovered a certain pictorial depth that my images create. I have researched this on black on white images, although I first noticed the extreme degree of it on colored work. I keep this compositional awareness in my layering of paint, to create depth and synergy between layers as desired. I have even discovered that the filing in of a top layer can reveal the quality of a lower layer that was previously obscured by the more sparse top layer.

I need to note that my Emerging Imagery works have definite compositional placement on the picture plane. But these are done with masking and reliefs, the marking process remains the same. I am happy to introduce these pictorial elements in my work, and the return to this process which engrosses me as stated above.

Another aspect of this spontaneous process of working, and which is different than other common practices, is that there is no possibility of imitation. I am not woking to copy another's look or style, regardless that it may look as such. In fact, doing automatic drawing was not an idea I wanted to pursue in the first place. It's revelation in me was just as spontaneous, and extraordinarily provocative. There is no way I could imitate in this as its is a very different process. This also means that making accurate studies for final works is also out. This impossibility of imitation is also a limit, and again imposed due to the commitment to spontaneity.

There are choices I do make in my art: properties of the support, formation of marking tools, properties of the media, and when to stop, and now an introduction of delineated imagery through masks and reliefs. I take these decisions very seriously as they are so few. And in these decisions I can take influence. But because of the spontaneity itself there is no possibility of influence in my marking. The surrender process is very different than a calculating process of imitation. In this way there is no possibility of me following an historical precedent in it. This goes against a very ingrained belief, and one I am not shy about bucking, because to me it has been exposed as the cerebral construct for what it is.

The philosophical implication of this is rather considerable, and I may put forth that so much more is based on an organic structure that is assumed to be of a cultural lineage. This of course is related to the "nature vs. nurture" dilemma. But what is intriguing is the distinct possibility of realizing in a profound way the inaccuracy of an assumption, one that may even be unknown as such. That the experiential revelation of an organic process, by contrast, can show the poverty of a conceptual construct.

A Career Move

I have recently changed the name of this blog, and have not posted for small while. This basically is a result of also having recently spoken with an arts career coach, which had made me reflect on making a split in my activities. Her input was that if I have a goal of making a living from my paintings, which I see as a fine goal, then I should consider that the upfront information about my process may dissuade many prospective galleries from representing me.

I am surprised as I thought an intriguing back story was a positive element, that authenticity and the provocative are desirable. But maybe in my case I guess it is not the kind of provocative that sells. This is a very interesting inquiry in and of itself and fodder for more creation.

But I am deciding to accept this career input. And can also see how working within these limitations can give me increased possibility in my pursuits. I am still moving ahead with painting, concentrating on compositional structures that in the past have proven effective, and also will be focusing on creating event based pieces in which I will display myself in my process. I see that I can proceed more fully in each direction this way. The challenge of how to communicate what I do and how to make that understandable is mitigated. No one could guess the degree and depth of automatization I experience from looking at my paintings. I now relinquish the effort in wanting them to. But those that see me in my events will witness me and know in that way.

For the time being, those find me through my events will find a way to this blog and to my painting website. But the link now will not follow in the other direction. I do believe an integration will come in the two directions, but will come from the direction of my event presentations. Then the whole work may be apparent to those who want to discover.

Ecstatic Qualia

I always wonder how to describe my ecstatic experiences. They are so different from any other type of experience. I tend to think of them as resulting from a distinct perception. They are always confounding. It has been this way and it continues to be this way. It is as shocking as discovering that there is a color that has never seen before, except in this case it is a perception that has never been experienced before.

I am drawn to indicate them as separate qualia, unique from the other sense perceptions. Qualia are "the internal and subjective components of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena." As sound is distinct from image and smell is distinct from touch so the ecstatic qualia appear distinct to me from all others.

I know, this is a confounding statement to make. It raises so many questions which are extremely challenging to pursue in thought. I cannot be definitive here. I just have to state that I am compelled to ponder the question of it, perception coming forth independent of the ones that we know and live with in a normal course of existence.

I have tried to describe the qualities of my ecstatic experiences on another post here. I did so by relating them to more normal experiences. However this can only be a distant representation. The ecstatic experience for me is not a collection of different sensations but more a systemic confluence of sensations mental, physical and visual and at other times aural as well. It can take place as a perception concurrently internal and external, sometimes without a clear distinction of which is primary.

Recently, as an example of sorts, during an ecstatic movement exploration I had the sensation of a white space in my chest area. I saw it in my mind's eye but could also feel it and see it inside my body. It also had a presence and an intelligence. I felt it was communicating to me, but was also a part of me. I am unable to say what that communication was but the sensation of it was systemic and unique. It came with a transformation of my normal sensation of being, which was an intense thing to experience.

And when it was gone the memory of it fades as well. I know it was something extraordinary, something to which all else pales in comparison, but the quality of the experience cannot be well represented in my mind. I know it when it happens. I have seen the white space before and know I will be familiar with it when I see it again. But I cannot quite recall the full quality of it when the perception is gone.

I assume that all of us are so individual that the descriptions of what I experience may have little recognition from others, even those who perceive their own ecstatic qualia. But I also assume that our form and make up are similar enough that the generalities can be recognized and acknowledged. There is a perception distinct from the ones commonly considered, one that can be indicated and discussed. Or perhaps, if not independent, then this acute culmination of various mental, physical and sensational processes is certainly a unique experience, one apart, the qualities of which can be recognized and explored.

I cannot escape thoughts on this distinction. And I am considering it an important place from which to explore, despite the challenges of describing the qualities of individual non shared experience which are not easily described in usual terms. This is what is put before me again and again as I recurrently find this increasingly familiar but distinct experience.

The Culmination of Dissolvement

By the time I completed this work I had already done a few works with organic debris mixed with acrylic compound, however with this one I decided to add some pigment into the mixture. In doing this I had the opportunity to vary the color of the mixture in order to add a distinct gestural element into what was a very textural and topographic surface.

The variance was in making a final and partial pass in a slightly whiter tint of the same orange color. This subtle contrast allowed the brighter color below to peer through which gave depth in an emblem like manner while still being integrated into the overall texture. This gave the work a certain presence which I always strive for.

On focusing onto this presence I found it growing when I became more aware of the many separate elements that made up the texture of the work. The more distinct I saw the various details the more the presence came forward. The more the parts and pieces began to separate and differentiate the more I could see the face of the whole. It was exciting to able to see this growing in two directions, a greater experience of the whole in complete relation to a view of increasingly distinct parts. The vision became more and more palpable, like a living breathing presence, the more and more it disintegrated.

Eventually the experience reached a point where I could no longer see deeper in the two directions, the parts and the whole, and the presence receded from prominence where it was just previously. However the notion of this paradox has stayed with me, of seeing the face of the whole only through seeing the infinite facets of its infinitely dividable parts, and has become part my personal mythology in my furthering exploration.

Unfortunately the tinted color I mixed became just bit more dark when it dried and that subtle level of contrast was lost. I never saw this again in this work quite the same.

Earth Bowl

There exist many objects of a religious nature. Many are associated with personages, others have to do with function in ritual and ceremony and others are tools for users to enter into spiritual realms and altered states. For some objects all these definitions may apply. The symbolic nature of many of these objects is important in reiterating the associations that make up a spiritual belief in practice. And perhaps because of the symbolism, or for more individual reasons, some objects are used to increase focus towards spiritual ends.

I have such an object, it was created through the practicality of it's function of focus for myself and from ideas about my ecstatic experience which I have explored in my art making. Here is the object.

Basically it is a small tub. The inside covered in a coat of top soil mixed with acrylic compound. The outside is wrapped in an bright orange velveteen fabric. This construction resembles other pieces I have created which have an interior of organic material with a brightly colored frame. These are honorific pieces to material, or specially to the fundamental interaction of material.

The coating of the tub occurred through using it to mix up top soil and mud mixtures with which I would paint. This layer was unintentional as I wasn't attempting to make an art piece with the tub. But in seeing the beauty of what looks like a hole into the mulch of the earth I decided to wrap the outside with an honorific cover.

However the function of the this object is to focus my ecstatic response. I discovered the use of this particular bucket of cup shape because of painting. My original stimulus was facing a drawing surface with a drawing implement in hand. Waiting in this position I could find the response that I had discovered and with which I was beginning to become familiar. At one point further on I also discovered that putting my brush into a paint bucket to be a stimulus as well, which was quite a surprise to me. Over the years I have used this to "prime the pump" before I paint to keep the response as constant as possible. Usually I have a cup on my art table just to point my marking tool to as a way to increase focus. Why this works I cannot say, perhaps I have trained this from my act of painting.

I can use my earth bowl in the same way, to focus myself towards an ecstatic response. The difference is that it is decorated in a way as such a ceremonial object can be. I have not so much used this particular object in this way but I do know it is very functional. On one occasion I brought it to an open sort of gathering where I was doing what I do, peering into the bowl as I would. At one point though a friend of mine who knows about me took a long stick and slowly pointed it into the bucket. On seeing I felt something very intensely cutting down through me in the same manner. So it doesn't have to be me who is using into the bowl to have it function for me.

The artifact I have created also has a certain level of symbolic association which is related to the thoughts I have gained about my actions and ecstatic experience. Also the symbolic nature of the shape and action I use with it are very potent as well; penetration, a portal, entering into depth, a vessel, a womb,etc.. All of these associations and others I have gathered will surely culminate as I go forward in continued exploration and performance.

Form, Content And Substance In Art

My art can be classified as abstract, but this is not at all accurate to what I do. The heart of it is a very basic interaction with substance. This oversight of the most substantial comes from its transparency by its very prevalence. It is overlooked while ideas and concepts take precedence. Ideas and concepts define the abstract. But neither form nor content are the foundation, rather it is substance.

Early art forms have a great awareness on the substantial. In tribal ceremonial rituals, decorating the body with mud and organic materials is about the relationship the participants have to these materials found in their worlds. A head dress is more about the materials that make it up than an item to be worn. Mud may become a disguise but it is a disguise made up of soil. It is not specific properties that are as important as the actuality of the material, it's history and relationship to those that seek and use it in their world.

Many artists in contemporary art have begun to put attention back on substance. Joseph Beuys is the prime example. He makes his metaphors and associations based on the origin, properties and history of various materials; fat, felt, wax, honey, basalt. Their inclusion in his work shows the potency of meaning materials have outside of any form in which they can be placed. The form chosen in his work reinforces the inherent meaning of the materials themselves.

Ideas and critical thinking about art are often blind to this aspect of the substantial. When it is discussed that Van Gough used earth pigments in his early works to represent the rural life of the peasants he was depicting it color as symbol that is referred to. What is not mentioned is that the pigments used actually come from the earth. The metaphor is greater than just a reference to an earth tone, a single property of the material. The artist depicts the lives of peasants and their agrarian connection to earth by using earth itself.

Andy Warhol's greatest attribute in his art would be considered his cleverness in taking the emblematic out of popular culture and putting it into the context of an art culture. However in this displacement of the emblems of consumerism he was commenting on the increasing abstraction in the culture away from a view of the substantial. The labels and product packages he reproduced stand for substantial materials, food substances and processed metal. However these substances require no label to be identified as what they are. The label is given due to a capitalistic and consumer economy, They are a complete abstraction. By reproducing labels and boxes which are empty, having no physical connection with the stuff they represent, he is showing how these emblems create distance from the actual by removing it once more. He is very much referring to the concrete and our relationship to it.

The great trickster and showman Yves Klein is often referred to a having invented a proprietary color, International Klein Blue or IKB. In actuality he formulated a binder/pigment recipe which would retain the greatest intensity of his chosen pigment. Color cannot be invented, it is a property of material, in this case ultramarine pigment, which cannot invented either. This is something that is forgotten in the cultural legend of the artist. It is possible that this misinterpretation was propagated by Yves Klein's own design, and if so this is a sly comment on how the substantial is easily overlooked by the lure of the conceptual. One can claim ownership to an idea, but not to the existence of substance.

The First Day

It was a Sunday evening, November 22, 2002, when I first started drawing automatically. I was asked by a friend to make a design for them. I took out the board from under my bed to use as a drawing table. It was large board with a smooth and white formica top. First though I just decided to draw for myself.

Somewhere in the activity I began to notice a movement churning inside me when concentrating on making sure every line had intent and integrity of its own. I had noticed this movement inside while also drawing a year before and thought it curious to feel it again. I decided to explore it.

Here is the series of drawings in order of how they were made that evening that led to me automatically drawing.

Below is a drawing I was playing with when noticed the movement again inside me. I tried to focus on it when making some of these marks here, seeing how my concentration could bring it out.

I decided to focus on the movement more than on the drawing, to let the activity of drawing bring it out.

I closed my eyes to better feel the movement and found it growing. My body began to spontaneously shake and gyrate. But when I opened my eyes I returned to the activity of drawing. I could feel the link of control of my mind over my hand.

At some point in here when I opened my eyes again I saw my hand moving about on its own automatically. The link of control was no longer there. I was a witness to the activity of my drawing. This was a very surprising moment.

Here is what I drew the next day.

Here is what I drew the day after.

When I look at these images now I cannot fully recall how profound the experience was of first discovering this movement inside me that drew by itself. It changed the direction of my life, one in which I am still following.

The next two months were incredibly intense for me with many strange spontaneous experiences. They were perhaps not a strange as what I have discovered since that heady time, but for a while I was completely immersed in a newly opening and unfamiliar world.

The Development of Perception

The reason I have been doing this art for a number of years now is because of the intriguing experience of doing it. The resulting artifact was not as intriguing to me. I was very dismayed to find myself doing work that resembled abstract expressionism, an art movement of fifty years past. This is not a career move I would have made otherwise. But I spent a lot of time at the task as the approach seemed more authentic to me than any other art I had made.

The provocative experience of doing the work has compelled me to explore it, to discover what is there. And in that I also have spent lot of time looking into the works I create. I wanted to see what I might be capturing that was as provocative as the experience of doing it. Truly, I could find a certain effect of the work, but it was very delicate and ephemeral. It took a level of attention that was not immediate in coming and easy to dispel. This seemed to be more about my relationship to the work than the work itself.

I was also not sure that the images had much difference from common sights seen day to day; stains on the sidewalk, the pattern of plaster on a wall, a store window having been painted over to hide work being done inside, spontaneous, random and unintentional. There was not much that differentiated these from my art. My experience was so provocative but the images I was creating were completely pedestrian. I was dismayed at this too. But maybe it didn't matter, maybe the organic process is what mattered. So I became interested in looking at these sights in my everyday and pondered the connection between the man made and the organic.

From the time I began doing this art I also began to have moments of lucid experience. At first they were rare, but over the years they have come more regularly. In this state everything I look at is completely intriguing. I am mesmerized by all around me. All is the same but somehow different, enhanced in a way that is very difficult to pin point. It would come spontaneously. There was no effort to see it this way, it was just there.

At three years of doing this artwork I saw an extreme three dimensionality in one of my paintings, like a topographical map. It was an illusion of sorts, again an effect that would come and go and which required some time to see, but unmistakeable and provocative when there. And there was also something more I could see, something in my relation to the work which helped to elicit my ecstatic response. This was not new to me, but more pronounced. I began to guide my compositions to make these effects more pronounced, to bring them more to the fore. If I could see depth and find an ecstatic response from my work perhaps I could make them so others could find it too.

In recent years I worked on a series of large scale images with many small dots. I invented a brush that made many small marks with each stroke. With this I can get a complexity of pattern that I cannot with other marking tools. The result is an open, deep and immersive texture which I think is the best invitation so far to the experience I find in my own work. I feel successful in my goal of bringing the door to my experience as forward as possible. I of course have also spent much time myself looking into these works, peering into the minutia of detail they have and feeling the effect they hold for me.

The lucid moments come much more commonly these days. I am beginning to know how to elicit them with varying degree of success. I find I can slip into to it fairly readily, or I just seem to find myself there. I can easily see it in the texture around me and there is nothing lacking in texture, if one looks closely enough. My vision can take me into a stunning wonderland. Nothing has changed, it is all still the mundane, but still amazing. It is not so different from looking at my art work, perhaps it even stimulates me more.

So I begin to think that my art making has been training to see in this way, that my focus on my art has enhanced my natural perceptive abilities. Maybe my images have been fairly ordinary all along, but now I can see the extraordinary within the ordinary from my involvement with them. My art maybe isn't about showing something new or intriguing, but about learning how to see the new and intriguing in the familiar. And when everything becomes that much more intriguing, even though experience is rather odd, everything seems that much more familiar to me as well.

Invented Marking Tools

When I first started doing this art I first used traditional art marking tools. The tool of choice in the beginning was the ink pen, a quill shaft with speedball nibs. This is what I was using the night I first began to draw automatically. I also experimented with various brushes as this was an obvious choice. It became clear though that the mark of these tools though would dictate look of the result, mostly calligraphic in nature. After a time I began to see that in order to vary the composition more than it had been I needed to use non traditional tools, but only non traditional in that they were weren't sold in art supply stores. There are all perfectly valid for making art. Every marking tool had to be invented in the first place, and usually designed for a specific application and look. Outside of that application new inventions have to be made.

An influence in this decision was viewing a work by Henri Michaux, a well known French automatic artist. I saw a density of ink that I was not able to get with calligraphy brushes. I sought to reverse engineer what sort of object could make such a mark and came upon the idea of using a root which had been slightly crushed. This seemed to work well. Although I have never found out what tools Michaux used in his works I would say this incident is the only direct influence of an artist's work I have taken, the nature of my work being spontaneous and not imitative.

I began to experiment with various objects and materials, grass, sticks, weeds, fabric, root systems, steel wool, feathers, reeds, glass containers, bark, wire brushes, etc., whatever seemed possible. I even once painted with a half desiccated worm I found on my door step. The imprint of the rings on its tail can be seen in the drawing, which greatly disturbed me when I finished it. I found each item had its own mark and in this way I could create a vocabulary of marks by choosing different tools. As I had little choice on the placement of marks on the picture plane this expanded my possibilities in composition.

When I began do canvases I had to invent objects which would work for oil and acrylic paints. Up until then I worked mostly with ink on paper. I found that eucalyptus bark worked well as a kind of quill for oil paint if I mixed the paint to the right constancy. I still used bunched weeds for wide stains of color. Foam and balls of bunched string also worked well in running paint over a longer path than most brushes could. I also constructed brushes with boar bristle and plant fiber that would hold both thick and thin paint at the same time so that the stroke wouldn't come out dry looking but still retain enough paint for the stroke to cover a distance. Pot scrubbers were also very good on initial layers in the painting. Often I would have an idea of how I wanted a mark to look and then invent the tool to make that mark, and sometimes engineer a consistency of paint to work with it.

The tool I use almost exclusively now is the ball bead chain. I experimented with this early on, getting the idea from seeing billboards up close in the Paris Metro platforms. With this I can get a multitude of marks on each pass. I can also get a smaller mark than with any other tool I have tried.

Here are some photos of tools I have used.

Updated Artist Statement

Today I wrote a new artist's statement to reflect the recent inclusion of delineated imagery in my work for a show I am participating in. This may be developed, but I am happy with the directness and breadth of it.

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In my recent work I have begun to add delineated images where here to for I have approached my work on a strictly spontaneous basis, spontaneous as in an inner impulse which directs my physical movements. It is an ecstatic state which I court when I work which not only causes automatic movements but will dramatically alter my perception of myself and my environment. The images that come from this are organic and over time I have begun to see the patterns that crystalize within them.

I Introduce delineated imagery into this open pattern with the use stencils and rubbings while still approaching the work in the same way as described above. The intent is for the form to emerge or be integrated in the flow of the pattern around it. The pattern is not the background, rather the forms are the frame which enables a better view of the pattern through a contrast between the two.

The pattern is a result of an ecstatic state while the forms come from intuitive mental imagery. In so I am making an external physical representation of the relation of these two states of being and of the perception that results from each. On a metaphorical level it emulates the cosmological notion of the birth of form from formlessness, which, as with all cosmological ideas, represents both external and internal processes. It is my hope that contemplation upon my work can give one a view into their own inner workings.

The Limits Of Sentiment And The Experience Of Creativity

As an artist I have an understanding of what moves people and how it moves them. Often a physical flourish, a color scheme, a tonal quality in sound can give a viewer a sensation or an emotional response. This can be very powerful and I am sure this is something family to all. It can take one into a different perspective of their experience and in so can be very provocative and enticing. Many people spend their lives creating cultivating these experiences for others, are driven to it even. It is an act of conjuring up form from an internal pool of ideas and images.

What happens when an artist makes decisions is that what has churned up inside is then made into a more or less concrete piece. It exists in time and space. It is something that has been solidified from something flowing. And this artistic statement affects others thoughts, feelings and perception. However this can speak to a way of experiencing that is solidified.

The internal movement felt in viewing artwork can be called sentiment. It can also be thought of as how the piece makes one feel. That which is displayed in the work which gives the response of sentiment in the viewer can be called the mood of a piece. The mood is based on a certain set of referents, elements that make up the composition, that collectively relate to each other. These compositional elements are interpreted and associated in the viewer to create sentiment within them. The physical colors, sounds, actions, images, characters and so forth become ideas upon which the viewer creates a story and emotion.

Although this response is of the moment of viewing and this will fluctuate over time, still it is rather specific to the elements that have been introduced. And as provocative as the experience of art can be it is often only a veneer over the immense possibility and power of association and creativity which exists within us all. It is the cooling form of the churning magma.

Sentiment of course exists in us in everyday life, art only manipulates its existence. Sentiment is a way of interpreting the things we experience, a way of putting them into perspective. It is a way of understanding but also in the same manner a way of insulating us as well. It is the creation of a story with emotion that helps us to act and move, but it is based on a limited set of elements. These specific elements are the elements our minds threw up to us and which we grasped onto for use in interpreting a specific circumstance. But even as a sentiment is settling there are still a continuing amount of elements that are being introduced from within us. The action of association and creativity pours on. Some of these may be disturbing to us, as could even be the unrelenting flow that comes. The orientation offered by one sentiment may be preferable to the disorienting experience of several forming at once. By choosing the understanding of one we protect from the knowledge of many.

It is my assertion here that we all have this great facility for creativity and association on going within us at all times. I can see it in myself and I have no reason to doubt it in others. I also know that the more clearly I can see this font of creativity the more amazing is the experience of it. When I compare this to the moments when I feel sentiment I know how much less the sentiment is. Even when sentiment is very compelling it is far less compelling than this experience. Looking at the sentiment I am distracted from the greater flow from which it was formed. The sentiment, the notion, is the little boat going down stream away from great powerful spewing surge of the font from which it came. Feeling the sentiment, reflecting on the notion, makes me forget what gave it birth and in so feels to me a the little death. All I have written above is an extrapolation of this. It is a personal experience of my being's make up turned into art criticism.

Then to return to art criticism, and even to propose an artistic direction, making art that is overly concerned on creating mood or on the manipulation of sentiment will yield a work that reflects a limit within the viewer. Art that may use sentiment and mood but use it to point to the greater creative actualities within us all will reflect to a greater degree the depth of personal experience already existing within. I think the artistic endeavor can be more than creating a statement to be pondered or felt but a way to enable the viewer reflect on their relationship to the art and in so to reflect on their own experience of themselves and their ever present world.

How To Fall In Love With A Rock (A True Story)

This is something I wrote for an online forum about an experience I had in spring of 2008--->

I haven't posted for quite a while but I think I need to write about this. As of late the change of perception which turns my surroundings into a magical land full of detail, vibrancy and association has been coming almost everyday with moderate duration at the least. In this situation I believe my task here is to relax and observe, not get too excited about the occurrence, be a detached but attentive witness. It remains to be mostly a spontaneous happening which I can elicit it to a degree, but not consistently to the highest plateau it can take me too.

Last Sunday I went with my friend to a drum circle in the redwoods, a regular gathering for the folks in the area. After sitting in the circle for a while, clapping rhythms to the drumming, I decided to take a short walk. I had already been already feeling the edge of the excitation I described above above and wanted to take a look around. I found a trail that took me around some trees to a secluded spot on a small sloping hill in the sun. I began to observe my surroundings and to feel the change coming in me. Next to the trail there was a nice rock formation protruding from the ground which I decided to stand next to. There I began to concentrate more on my body and surroundings to elicit the experience even more. Soon I was standing with bent knees while intense kryias were racking my body. I was feeling the intensity of the exicitation as it was running through me. This is not something unknown to me, but I was taking the time to bring it on as fully as possible in a natural environment which I don't remember ever doing before.

After a short while I decided to return to the group. I was already conscious of the fact that someone might come up the trail and see what I was doing so I was already feeling conspicuous. but I wanted to keep the feeling in my body while returning to the group so took my time going back so that I could. I walked at a moderate pace stopping at times to overcome my self-consciousness as it came while approaching the group. It came to mind that there was something I was carrying on my back the way the sensation felt from the hips up the spine to the shoulders and head. I played with the idea of that I was bringing back what I had found to the gathering. 

Soon enough I was back at the circle with the excitation well enough in form. I didn't know what to do with myself at first but noticed a standing woman next to me who was shaking. She seemed like she could have been having kryias as well but possibly it was a ritual exercise of some sort. In any case it allowed me to let go of my self-consiousness and to concentrate again. I was looking about the people in the circle and letting it come on while trying to relax, not shaking so much but pacing a bit and allowing it all to grip me. My vision was definitely enhanced and all looked particularly beautiful and intriguing to me. Eventually the excitation was such that I began to shed tears at what I saw before me, relaxing to let them flow naturally. 

Everything around me in all direction was vivid and intricate. I looked at the ground and decided to pick up a grey colored rock about the size of my fist. If everything was so amazing to me then this ordinary rock would have to be too and so I wanted to investigate it. After I picked it up I began to roll it in my hands looking at it. It became the most beautiful thing there turning in my hands. I was filled with awe and began to sob and shed tears stronger than before. I began to feel a great connection to the rock and although I didn't think of this at the time but it seems that it became my beloved. Soon I thought of putting it back on the ground but also felt that I needed it near me. But knowing it was a rock I thought it best to just let it go and dropped it back to the ground. I then sat in the circle for a bit witnessing all that was happening and then walked around the group a short ways. I had paternal feeling for the participants that somehow they all belonged to me in a way.

Now I am trying to be cool about this all as that is my main directive, but, as intense as it was, I cannot help but think what falling in love with a rock can mean for me? What does this experience say about all my efforts and desires of procurement and all my struggling for the avoidance of suffering which all come back to me soon enough? What is there that I can bring from the one side to the other to inform me on a better way of living? Or is there a lesson like this here to be found at all? If falling in love with a rock is absurd then what in our lives would not be absurd? Should I try to cultivate this again? And to what purpose? Should I in the future be nervous when I am with my lady friend while passing a rock for fear that she will become jealous? Certainly it is a long path from the ecstatic to the normative. It is one I am becoming more familiar with, despite all the questions .

Reasonably I can make no decision here. But when I think of it intuitively I hear that this is about stewardship, taking care of others, the other. I am not sure how falling in love with a rock logically leads to this but that is what I am hearing and maybe I will learn more later.

However, as a last note, I think the best lesson already learned was allowing the rock to drop back to the ground. 

Archived Words

I have recently removed some written items from my website and am posting them here. They were written between 2003 and 2006.

In Search of a Context

It seems that I am displaying an unusual behavior, but not one unnatural. There may be precedents in the Charismatic Christian community with their physical reactions to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Also spiritual possession ritually practiced in traditional Caribbean and other cultures may hold some insight. And religious stories of rapture and visitation in European historical mythology may have some similarities. I do not make a claim to a connection to a spiritual power regardless of what I have experienced in my life. But I can say that I am having a very profound response to something the nature of which I cannot explain and that this response is one that is deeply human.

I have a background in art, in the techniques and in critical and conceptual analysis. I am an artist and so I put this experience in a context of art. Particularly I can say this because the behavior comes out the strongest and in fact revealed itself under the efforts of mark making. And although I do make pictures and want to investigate the images that come about I cannot consider that image making is the central purpose for what I do. However in contemporary art this poses no problem. So I assert that my investigation is within an art context although this investigation may well point to other aspects of culture and belief.

The spiritual context seems to hold great weight in its relevance to my uncommon behavior and it is one I will not discount due to the cultural authority it possesses. However I will not look for explanations that present general interpretations of what I am experiencing. Instead I will investigate various contexts as an inquiry to see what can be revealed or uncovered. And this I will attempt to present through my efforts in conceiving and fabricating events and artifacts as an artist in a contemporary world.

Abstract versus Automatic

When I see works that are abstract I am amazed by how the artist did them. People will call my work abstract but it is not. Abstract means to diverge by degrees from a starting or reference point. This is not the process I undertake.

I believe others like Jackson Pollock in the pure drip painting and Henri Michaux and Mark Tobey in many of their works are similar. Obviously these artists early on worked from forms and got further and further into abstraction derived from those forms but at some point the connection broke. André Masson is noted as giving inspiration to Pollock and Gorky with his automatic drawing experiments and I think this is the difference. It is that break into automatic drawing that makes this work separate from abstraction.

When I see an exceptional abstract work I can see the intense understanding of form. But in contrast I do not consider form when I work. The results in my art making seem to approximate this type of imagery but the process is organic, not derivative or contemplated, and so is in fact not abstract. I might say the same for the artists I have named above; their art making is more on an organic response level rather than based on a great concern of form.

Automatic artists were not and are not really concerned about picture making. One look at Pollock's work will tell you that. But I suppose he had the inspiration and courage to make that break, which ties his work in closer to the surrealists. For myself I must say that concerns of picture making hinder the process and I have had to do much work to put what comes to aesthetic ends (and I realize that these ends do not represent the central nature of the work.) However, it seems to me on viewing abstract works that picture making is the guiding goal. And that is why they are so beautiful.

I cannot present an explanation for what this organic response is but I am thinking of the results as a naturally forming crystal. Patterns reoccur in my work, most noticeably a drift to the left lower corner (which I have corrected to a degree with a more balanced posture.) And sometimes series of images will have very similar characteristics. Where this comes from I do not know but it is something I am discovering and not conceiving. On viewing the work of the artists listed above I think I can see the crystal emerging in their imagery. And to me this organic form that shows itself makes it incongruous to apply the term abstract.

However the question remains, if the goal of this type of work is not picture making, what is the purpose in delving into an organic response and how does that tie into contemporary, historical and anthropological concepts of art?

Not that I need to prove the point any further but who has ever called their children's work abstract? And are the painting elephants really capable of abstract representation?

Art Making While Asleep

Many times after a day of art making when I am laying in bed and falling asleep in my mind's eye I am in front of an image and I am drawing and moving in the way that I do. Then suddenly, in accordance to a gesture I see myself making, my fully relaxed body makes a swift, strong and languid jerk, as if I was used as a whip.

I have also been awakened from my sleep by such a powerful jerk and then remember dreaming of doing my art. And I wonder, am I not really doing the same thing as when I am in front of my images, even though I am asleep? And then, so what materials are involved?

Hmm.

When this impulse comes in these cases afterwards I sometimes try to recreate the exact physical sensation. I cannot. The movement seems to emanate from a physical place inside that I do not consciously know how to move.

Even while drawing sometimes the impulse comes so strong that I cannot seem to even hit the surface with the marking tool. At these times I let go of the tool, look at the image and let the movement come again and again until I am too tired to continue, paying as much attention as I can to what is happening. And again comes the same question, What is really different here? Am I not still making art?

The State of the Ecstatic 2006

The previous posting to this section of the website was made over two years ago. I decided not to add any words for a time, my discoveries always being so fragile and elusive that I needed to be gentle with them. But over the past couple of years my experience has expanded and what was formerly very ephemeral is becoming more familiar. And new insights appear continually.

I have found that my experience correlates closely to what in the Hindu tradition is called the Kundalini. A book documenting occurrences of Kundalini called "The Kundalini Experience" by Lee Sannella was the first document I ever read which I feel accurately details what I experience. The spontaneous and involuntary movements that come in these cases are called kryias, a word from the same tradition.I have found that what I do can come away from the art table. I have discovered many things that when I give them my concentration become stimuli to the ecstatic experience. These are functional stimuli that elicit the excitation that makes the experience. The excitation however is always spontaneous. That is the excitation does not come through a direct effort but comes as a reflex like response to the stimuli I concentrate on.

One of these stimuli is a way of looking into my images. I do this to test my response to the image to help me decide what to do next. Some images seem to elicit a stronger response. I also have found that I can see in my images a great depth, a deep physical three dimensional relief. And then sometimes a greater vividness comes which is difficult to explain but has more to do with my relation to the image than the image itself. I try to compose the image to bring this effect as forward as possible. However I have recently done some images that I respond to very strongly but which on an objective level don't seem to be as interesting as others. This is something I am now considering.

This is a list of what I call my approach, a series of reminders to keep my concentration on the stimuli when I work. First there is a highly effective four word prayer of personal construction. Then thinking the word "Gravity" has me imagine a downward force penetrating through my body and my mind to relax them. When I am at the palette sometimes I point my marking utensil towards the opening of a cup while looking into it. I discovered this early on when I found that dipping my pen into the ink well also could bring a response. While painting, thinking the words "Spirit Forward" or "Spirit" brings my attention to that which draws for me. It is a kind of surrender which also incorporates a certain attention to the tip of my marking utensil. "Look" reminds me to view the image in the way I do as discussed above. And recently I have discovered something new which elicits a very intense response when I am present enough to get to it. It is still very elusive and builds upon "Look". I am calling it the "Great Witness" as it entails intensely observing what I do while also being profoundly detached. This yields intense excitation, much movement, distinct perceptional alterations and a welling of emotion, but as if I am watching myself do this from a distant, calm and quiet place. I have repeated this approach so I know it functions.

For me making these images and objects is a practice of eliciting the excitation and the ecstatic experience that comes. That is the central aspect of what I do. I no longer need the art table in order to do this as I now have other ways available to me for eliciting the experience. However I still like the idea of using the excitation to create an artifact as it did when it first came to me. This bridge from the very internal to the external, which seems to bypass my participation in its span, is still very compelling to me. In all honesty though I must add that the results of this practice are varied. There are many things to be concerned with in making an art object besides eliciting an ecstatic experience. Although a physical artifact is always produced the depth of the experience is never as consistently intense as it can be at times. I must constantly work to keep up my concentration and find that things are shown by degree. This flux is part of the practice.

Stigmata

Trying to wash the stigmata away that keeps gushing beneath the faucet as it flows diluted red down the drain forever but the hole doesn't rinse away. It gets deeper, deeper than the width of a hand as it reaches into the well of all blood.

O Stigmata, O Bleeding Stigmata, you stain my life with ink down to each finger which cannot move and not write endless lines of flowing blood flowing like lines of blood flowing like life.

O Blessed Stigmata, please stop your flowing as I am obliged to drip lines of endlessly flowing lines writing the history of all blood lines that connect all life and this I do not want to do.

Stigmata says, Do you know the flow is endless? The lines are endless? I will use you until you are empty and then I will take another to let flow the well of all blood to bleed the endless blood of all blood that writes endless lines of life's blood endlessly.

You are blessed and the bleeding is a bleeding of the blessed blood that flows endlessly until it flows in you no more. You are blessed and you will write the flowing lines of all blood flowing like lines of blood flowing like life.

You are blessed, blessed to bleed the blessed blood of all blood, blessed to be obliged to bleed the endless lines which writes the history of all blood that connects all life. You are blessed to bleed until there is no more blood to bleed. And when you are fully bled then you will be written endlessly in the endless flow of all blood that flows into lines of blood flowing like lines of flowing blood flowing like life.

A Sacrament of Tears

Boy, why do you cry?

I see the death of everything
I see the birth of everything
There is nothing to do but cry