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