Black And White Revival

 At the time of this writing I have been spending much time in the studio. The upcoming twentieth anniversary of when automatic drawing began has me reinvesting in the work I have done. In that I am going back to the foundational formulae that, on review, shows the most reliable outcome. This also means eschewing color and a return to a black and white palette.

Black ink on white paper was what I was doing when the automatic drawing showed up, and what I experimented with for a good amount of time. It is a traditional starting point for many artists. With its stark contrast it reveals all of the power and flaws of the form with no color energy to confuse, distract or influence.

This format is also a parallel to script, which makes use of full binary contrast to make the characters and the meaning they impart legible and immediately comprehensive. I see my work as metaphorically related to script and could be seen as automatic scripting, even though not as automatic writing, The characters’ representation must be interpreted from their intrinsic form.

The binary aspect of black and white is also very rich with metaphorical reference in itself. The Yin-Yang symbol and its concept shows this very clearly. Informational systems based on this binary polarity, such as ink on paper and digital codification, are also part of the metaphorical construct.

I have been doing many of these smaller format drawings using india ink with a goose quill on smooth bristol paper. I have been applying this to a few larger format as well, but have now a good collection of these smaller images.

Without the distraction of color, I can see more succinctly the intrinsic quality of my drawings. The decision of tool and media have been made so the task is to draw until the image flashes as done. I am refining my sense of what completion is for these drawings, and so all my work in general, in being able to see and know the culmination that gives the greatest effect.

I have also been combining two previous developed approaches into individual pieces, fusing scrolls and proximity drawings. As referenced above, I see a relation of my automatic drawing to script, and in that I have done several works in very long formats in the form of scrolls, with some works taking up complete rolls of paper. These works are not necessarily meant for full display. Proximity drawings are done on a vertical surface. Most usually I work on a flat table, but proximity drawings done on a vertical surface are intended to be hung at the same height in which they were completed. I call them proximity drawings because they show the actual placement in space of myself to the drawing and also serve as a document of an event. In combining the two approaches I am doing studies for very long proximity scrolls which will be of thirty feet in length. Here is is one of the studies, 3ft x 8ft.

An interesting aspect of the proximity drawing is when standing and painting on a vertical surface the width of the marks are naturally encompassed within a three foot heighth. I am also planning to do long murals in the same proximity approach (there is no other way if I am standing and painting on a fixed surface). Of course I would start with black on white, as that will give the most powerful representation on the intrinsic aspect of the form.

I am also returning to the achromatic ecstatic screen formation. This has been one of my most successful experiments and it is now beyond the time to revive it. i stated off with white on black and am now doing several of black on white. These are 5ft square, smaller than the original series at 7ft x 6.5ft.

Again, with these it is good to find the full sense of the patterned details with the heightened contrast of black and white. I have been gifted five quality stretchers at 6ft x 5ft and am planning to do an immersive installation a total size of 6ft x 25ft. I am working on models of density. I also need to decide if I will use the format of most of the original ecstatic screen works, which although look like just black on white, actually also employ a very dark burnt umber and a dark rich violet on a very slight color cast in the white primer. We have to be honest, there really is no strictly black and white in media. Everything has a cast in relation to other media formula. So even in achromatic there is still a decision around chroma, and this can be used creatively.

Another thing about returning to achromatic palette which is not specifically about the colors but more about implied reduced compositional decisions is that I can give more attention to the systemic ecstatic movement within me when I do the work and not be distracted by other compositional decisions as I go. The movement will come with the most cursory attention (that is the nature of automatic) but I consider a focus in what is transpiring in me as part of the artistic process. This focus was essential to the development of my ecstatic abilities and without it I don’t think I would have been able to take it out into the public, which is the continuation of my creative ecstatic exploration. Since the choice of media and tool have been made, I only have to focus on the ecstatic movement arising, again making this approach as going back to the most essential.

I am sure I will go back to using color and will venture to it even currently from time to time. For now though focusing on a black and white format will reassert the intrinsic quality of my work in it’s presentation, without color detracting or influencing the viewer away from the quality of the form which I am able to capture, and let me refine my skill at seeing and capturing that quality.

Influence And Linage In Art

There are people who will ask me if I like the Abstract Expressionism. And honestly I have to say I am not overly interested in the genre. That may be surprising because my work looks to many to be influenced by that movement.

Firstly though I want to deconstruct the term that is attributed to this period. Many of these terms are pronounced by critics to describe what they see happening in artistic circles, as is so in this case. Artists, of course, resist categorization, and perhaps there were artists from this period who did not agree with this term to describe their work. Certainly for me, neither word has any accuracy.

Abstraction strictly speaking means a derivative or a rarefaction of form. This was certainly occurring in art in the first half of the 20th century with depicted imagery moving away from representations that were for the most part very pictorial. However for me in my work this method of rarefaction is not in my process. My marking is spontaneous and automatic. I do not even think about form or placement on the picture plane when marking. A process of abstraction does not take place.

I also do not see my work as expressive. Again Expressionism was used to describe works also in the early 20th century that tried to create an extreme mood though color and exaggerated imagery. I would not be able to tell you what my work is expressing because I have no intention of expressing anything, emotional nor otherwise. And I have no way to express anything in my process in anyway even if I wanted, as it is again an automatic process. As a side note though I think in this way I solved the great artistic problem put forth by Samuel Beckett in his wonderful early piece “Three Dialogues.”

Again this criticism of the term could be applied to artists of the period whose work deviates in process from an accurate reading of the descriptor Abstract Expressionism, even though their work may be classified as such. In this respect the term may then only be useful in pointing to a group of artists of a certain period and place who hold somewhat similar stylistic concerns.

Coming back now to on viewing my work one would assume that it is influenced by Abstract Expressionism; I can assure you that it absolutely is not. In fact when I started to draw automatically, through involuntary movement, I was very dismayed to do work that resembled that period. Even in my college art days twenty years earlier it was considered a hackneyed form. I did not want to do what I called “splat art”, but was so extremely intrigued by this discovery of an automatic process I had to follow to see it through.

Again I come back to this being automatic to point to the impossibility of this coming from an outside artistic influence. There is no way for a decision of influence to arise in that context. I also must point out that I had no intention of trying out an automatic drawing exercise, which is something that some Abstract Expressionists explored as a visual arts adaptation of Surrealist writing exercises. It just showed up in me as I followed a movement in my body. At one point when opening my eyes after closing them to focus on the movement, I saw my hand moving on it’s own, and the usual link it had to my mind was gone. How can there be any cultural influence to this?

This also calls into question the nature of artistic influence and of artistic linage in general. It is a matter of convenience that art critics and historians portray a movement from period to period as only a development or reaction to a previous period. It is such a common occurrence to ask someone of their influence and expect a list of former artists. But this would only be a minor aspect of influence for an artist overall. This is like in an interview when Sun Ra was asked what were his influences, to which he replied, “The planets, nature, the birds.” He understood the greater creative force, and it is not for me to guess at Sun Ra’s tremendous mind, but I don’t think the idea of artistic lineage even came up for him in response to the question. What prompts an artist to make art as they do, or even engage in the endeavor at all, as fully committed as some do, is a far greater question than can be answered through a model of evolving and passing artistic fashions.

About my my own sense of artistic lineage, here is the telling of a dream and a poem I wrote, both within the first months of when I started to do ecstatic automatic drawing.

The Dream

It is early in the morning and I have the feeling of heat on my chest covering my sternum. I am still dozing, half between sleep and wakefulness. I see an image of a large reddish black lacquer stroke on a yellow sandstone wall which is the same size and shape as the heat on my chest. The image on the wall and the heat on my chest are connected, are in fact the same. I hear the words; every stroke, every letter, every word, every sentence, every page, every volume, as I see that the stroke is now part of a letter, Hebrew in appearance, which is now part of a word and now part of a line and now more lines and even more and more lines that keep multiplying reaching back to a beginning beyond where my eyes can see.

The Poem

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.

Inseminating Gravity

 Recently a friend commented on social media to my Proximity Scroll drawings, “Making love to space.” This was an insightful response and had me think of my work entitled “Inseminating Gravity” from my Emerging Imagery series. In the series I incorporated images into my usual automatic marking though stencils and reliefs with the images coming from my own ideas on my ecstatic experience and the formation of conceptualizing in general. I have taken some time to reconstruct my thoughts on the imagery of this particular work.

The three main elements are a cross section of a bowl shape, the outline of a guiding gateway and the main element, the dark entropic field from which the other elements emerge while also outlining and containing the field. This metaphysical construction is based on the attention I give to my body for eliciting the ecstatic response and to the response that comes itself.

When I do my work I have words I say to myself to focus - Gravity, Look, Forward. I also have words of gratitude.

The word Gravity comes from a walking meditation I derived decades ago where I wanted to have my body be as relaxed as possible. I would say to myself “A body at rest is aligned with gravity” and imagine gravity pulling all that didn’t need to be supported downwards. This exercise was built upon with similar thoughts and yielded some astounding results, but which is another tale. The bowl shape is a metaphor for the pelvic bowl which I focus on relaxing when I elicit an ecstatic response and which allows the excitation of the response to move more uninhibitedly throughout my body.

Look is represented by the dark entropic field, which in this case is functional as well it representative. Looking into the image of my artwork also will elicit an ecstatic response in me and I can see the image open up accordingly. I must add it is a very soft look which can yield this seeing of something emerging, mostly as a systemic perceptual shift. And this generally passive but active investigation is the basis for the title. The field also holds to possibility of permeability and the mystery of the what may be found when entering further into it, like peering into the night.

Forward comes from trying to be more aware of the ecstatic movement as it comes to me. When I first started doing automatic drawing, it would just come, as it still does. But in my curiosity I wanted to have more awareness of what was transpiring, so the word forward has me focus on that movement so I can become more aware of the propelling impetus within it. Just recently I have been doing drawings on a vertical surface, something I have not done for many years. When standing back a distance from the surface the ecstatic response will extend my arm and propel me towards the drawing. This remedied me of when I was astonished to first feel that many years ago when drawing on another vertical surface. This forward is represented by the guiding gateway.

It is through surrender which allows the ecstatic experience to emerge. And it is through more surrender to enter into it more and more fully. Then what is there to be revealed can be more and more fully experienced. What may transpire can completely surprise me. It may encompass experiences I could never have formulated. Anything goal related has to be eschewed then the discovery will emerge.

This also requires an experiential foundation to the inquiry, and which steps away from an object/subject conceptualization out of functional necessity to enter into the ecstatic state, as I have discovered. Experientially, a view of cause and effect arises as a purely conceptual construct and cannot be accounted for nor implemented. The philosopher David Hume stated “When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connection; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other.”

Being more in the moment, events are experienced and known as they come, arising in the instance of their occurrence outside of the possibility of consideration on how or why they arise. This experience of witnessing the continual unfolding of happenstance comes with a bit of a mysterious sensation. I have thought of this with the simple description of “grace”. And metaphorically, the continual arising of grace is much like the continual pulling of gravity. In the surrender agenda, aligning with grace, the mysterious unfolding of continual happenstance and following the movement that comes to me, is similar to the bodily aligning with gravity. So I have equated the two.

A question though comes up, where does volition appear? This bring up the reoccurring philosophical debate of free will versus determination. However, since cause and effect, which is the underpinning of the deterministic perspective, cannot be considered in an experiential framework, this perspective is rendered inoperable. It also doesn’t follow that if there is no determinism, there is only free will. My own conditioning and compulsions I can feel arise in me. Causation is not a useful explanation here, which is the concept that an abstract notion that is the cause of these compulsion. It is more of an awareness of when these types of compulsions arise with in my body and mind from how they feel, how I experience them. And interestingly enough it is through surrender to the ecstatic experience that has let me begin to see these compulsive tendencies in me more clearly though their contrast to the experience ecstatic state.

Volition in this state is active surrender to what arises and doing the best to eschew compulsive responses, which is kind of like hopping on hot sand to find a cool spot, as moving away from one compulsion will land right into another. And the effort to resist compulsion will show up as compulsion too. To be sure of violation means removing it from compulsion, so it becomes very reduced. And then this tiny refined amount of pure volition can be injected into the surrender and the following of grace and the movement that comes. There is nothing else to do with it.

This is not a passive act. It is very active one that goes forward with the movement and the experience of grace. A passive act would easily fall into continual compulsive behavior. We really need to be honest about the omnipresence of our compulsions and conditioning, otherwise condition will be mistaken for volition and volition will never really be seen.

This faint act of volition into the surrender and alignment of grace is what the title “inseminating Gravity” is denoting. However, mythological speaking, a metaphor needs be compounded, which is when the phenomenon of “constellating” as described my Karl Jung can appear. Joseph Campbell also speaks of the multifaceted dimensions of mythological symbolism. Whomever asserted the adage “don’t mix your metaphors” was surely trying to regulate the creative literary mind away from a path of thought which could bring danger to the maintained status quo of conceptual dominance, ensuring it through metaphorical constraints convenient to their designs. So the metaphor must be compounded to include the personal emotional intimacy and physical excitation of the ecstatic experience.

As somewhat described above, gravity in the title also refers to the physical aspect of relaxing and aligning. And the forward sensation, depicted as the guiding gateway in the image, is also a physical propulsion. The aligning and relaxing in the ecstatic state can yield a very intense physical excitation, not dissimilar to orgasmic release. This has also been represented in traditional art forms depicting ecstatic behavior, such as in images of Saint Teresa in her ecstasy. The base of the pelvis is symbolically depicted in the painting, which is the focus of the physical relaxation and alignment practice. The forward propulsion can also arise from the same spot giving a sexual sensation to the physical excitation, but not exclusively so. It is in fact very much subordinate to the systemic body wide and emotional excitation. But the forward propulsion does feel like a penetration into what yields and reveals the ecstatic outcome, which is often entails the bliss state as depicted in those homages to Saint Teresa.

This is what makes my friend’s comment so insightful. This excitation gives an overwhelming intimate sense with my surroundings. It is a sense of extreme vulnerability, as being observed as much as I observe, and may be what is referred to an interpenetrating experience, the love making connotations are here apparent. The work references and confabulates multiple expressions of physical, emotional, psychological and metaphysical observation and practice in a mythological symbolistic fashion, with the entropic field as the main focal point, which is both a result of and a stimulus to an ecstatic response, it then being functional as well as metaphorical simultaneously, further compounding the mythological construct.

The work depicts the method of willful surrender into the ecstatic state which then can overwhelm the surrenderer though their own participation, and who can then begin to observe through that shifting perspective what can only be experienced by being in that shifting perspective, willfully following towards what is mysterious to experience what was veiled before. It is the willfulness to surrender and follow the movement in which the ecstatic state arises and reveals what it will reveal. This revelation, a result of the interaction of the personal with the flow of mysterious happenstance, is the creative act. The willful following is the insemination into this relationship, that which enables this creation of revelation to occur.

Seeing Balance in Gestures

A question is often asked when I describe that my approach is totally automatic, how do I know it when the work is finished? This is of course a consideration for all who are involved in an art making process. But the question is still a good one when it is observed that through the automatic approach my work is devoid of intention.

I see my work as being generated, not so much composed. The composition choices I make are the choice of surface, what media to use with what marking tool, and when to stop. Otherwise I just follow the spontaneous movement that arises inside me.

Because I have done this for a while I can somewhat predict how the various gestures will build up. The image has it’s own intrinsic form. It is like the formation of crystals which I observe as they are growing. What I have learned is that over the process that there are moments when the image will coalesce or constellate, showing a balance in its marking. Then the image may show more movement or depth.

There are several times an image will gain this balance, usually about five or six points like this in the process. These moments come more often in the beginning and then diminish over time. So if I pass one point of balance I know another will come. However when the the work is already rather dense the next point of balance requires a lot more marking. When the work is already dense I have to consider if I really want to continue on to eventually find the next point.

When choosing a single marking tool and medium, stopping is the only other compositional choice I make. Here are some examples of balance points in a drawing.

So why do I see these as balanced points? I am not really sure, but certainly has to do with how the mind organizes what is seen. It may be a pleasing ratio between the white and black. It may be various areas being more obviously indicated or delineated. It may be both. It may just naturally pass through traditionally discovered points of good compositional arrangement. But it all has to do with how we interpret what we see.

I also have another indication of a stopping point though. This is the point when the on viewing the image it will easily elicit an ecstatic response. This sometimes is when there is a more obvious compositional balance, but sometimes not, but usually they are very close. I then have to make a choice of which I want to be more pronounced. However I usually stay with the point that elicits a greater ecstatic response, because of the question of whether I may be capturing something very subtle, even though most may never see it as such.

Then it can be asked again, why do I see these ecstatic eliciting points? This is even a more challenging question. It may be related to those more traditionally viewed composition balance points. Or maybe it depicts a more subtle organization reflected back to the mind and nervous system. This I cannot know. But I still want to ensure it is in the work in hopes that this intrinsic quality can be communicated to other viewers.

A Social View On Ecstatic Personnage

 I recently saw a local grant to artists that wanted to support artists in communities that have been traditionally marginalized. And I have to reflect as a practitioner of ecstatic arts if that would incorporate myself. Historically ecstatic practitioners have been suppressed, their ceremonies outlawed and individuals targeted, exposed and executed. This of course was mainly, but not exclusively, in Europe. This transpired to such a great degree that a traditional lineage has been for the most eradicated to the extent that such practices are totally unrecognizable to most modern people. There is no community for me to belong to at this point. An eradicated community is surely a traditionally marginalized community, but there is no community currently present to enable one to make that acknowledgement.

Representations of ecstatic behavior in modern culture have been mostly reduced to horror film tropes or relegated to naive primitivism. Anyone who would begin to experience ecstatic moments would probably be inclined to suppress themselves based on externally assimilated expectations of acceptable and healthy behavior. Those who do not or cannot control their behaviors risk being medicated or even institutionalized. I was certainly wary of sharing too much when I first started exhibiting ecstatic behavior, and it took a long time for me to be open about it. And even in so named “Ecstatic Dance” events I experienced chiding, chastising, shunning and coercive suppression. This is the degree which this behavior has become redefined and misconstrued, to the point of not being recognized for what it is.

One of the reasons ecstatic behavior has been so completely marginalized is because it is an individual expression of autonomy. It is not something that is taught or learned but organically arises. It exists outside of an externally imposed cultural structure. And so it is a threat to a cultural order, especially where there is a hierarchy of spiritual authority. But it is more radical that that. It is a threat to any internalized cultural pretense within the individual. It subverts conceptual presuppositions and exposes the individual to their own expansive personal domain of awareness, perception and experience, completely outside of any reliance on thought. It is destructive to the structure of identity itself. I myself have had to actively surrender up pretense to enable myself to more fully enter into these experiences, which when I do will rip away further emotional attachments to other notions I have of myself, often in a painful manner.

It seems prescient that the discovery of the ecstatic response in me, that which challenges and disrupts identity, came just before the emergence of social media, which gave rise to an industry of personal branding and launched a torrent of divisive, manipulative and coercive discourse. The experience of an ecstatic response is very much antithetical to this whole trajectory of modern culture. I don’t know what a community of ecstatic practitioners might be, but I would assume that their connection would be informed of the shared experience that adherence to doctrine or dogma is totally superfluous to the primacy of being.  Could I consider myself a member of a community of disparate practitioners through time and space? Could I consider myself a community of one? Might a community be concerned with advocating for those who have displayed ecstatic abilities and who have been shunned, misdiagnosed, wrongly medicated and hospitalized? However,  this all is predicated on an initial step of reintroducing to the public the organic existence of ecstatic behavior and then in educating them about a practice of it. If there is complete cultural blindness, the question of understanding and acceptance can never arise.

The Great Witness

 In recently reviewing my old journals I have come across several references to “The Great Witness.” I honesty do not recall coining this phrase but on further reflection and review it refers to something that comes up very frequently in the formulation of my ideas and approach. It points to both an internal poise and to a sensory ecstatic outcome.

In the early days of doing ecstatic drawing, at my art table on a spring day I suddenly felt a huge presence behind me that put the hairs on neck on end. It seemed to be about ten feet tall, leaning over me and looking with extreme intensity to what I was drawing. There was no sense of a focus on me, only on the act of drawing. It was like a personage from a very high echelon was investigating an event done by one far below in significance.

I just kept on drawing for the benefit of this intense witness. After a minute or so the presence was just as suddenly gone. Now I don’t necessarily purport the true existence of spirits, but I do understand that a contained experience of one’s self and surrounding is actually more flexible than what may be commonly thought. I took the experience to be a lesson by example in how to increase my concentration in the task at hand while discounting any personal involvement and attachment to it.

I try to keep a continual visual attention to my artwork as I am doing it. This may seem like an obvious thing to say for a visual artist, but remember I am an automatic artist, so don’t use my eyes to plan placement of marks on the surface. So basically my visual focus is so I can see it open up while I am doing it, which then feeds back into the ecstatic response. I think the specific reference to the “Great Witness” in the journals is to moments when this visual focus leads to an expanded sense of awareness of the work, although I do not recall the exact moments of the references. It is odd to consider an ecstatic experience of witnessing, which implies the sense of witnessing as external to the individual, but this is what it can feel like.

In reflecting more on my internal landscape since my ecstatic emergence, I began to notice times when many images come into my mind, usually at moments of rest. It was sometimes a book of dream images whose pages were being flipped.  The detail was stunning of images that would suddenly appear before my mind’s eye. But I found I would have to relax as I focused on the images, as an effort to look further into them out of amazement would immediately end the flow.

The name of this blog,” tiny eyes look”, is also a reference to a practice of intense concentration with extreme detachment. I got it when eliciting my ecstatic response at a movement event. I found a rather pronounced ecstatic response, but also noticed that when the sense of those around me became more objectified, I would get distracted from the ecstatic experience. My view of the people had to be included into the ecstatic experience, and I had to detach from thoughts of them which would distract. There was a moment when the words “tiny eyes” came to me and the ecstatic experience expanded, so I took it on as a name.

At one of my pilgrimage performances, where I elicit ecstatic experience in the public concourse, I was at the corner of Market and Montgomery and came to a very pronounced ecstatic response. It was a “heaven on earth” experience, everything being amazingly beautiful and vast and the tears began to flow. My ecstatic overview was indeed awe producing. But I noticed that if I went into the awe response the ecstatic experience would lessen. I had never heard this ever being expressed, “don’t go into the awe,” but here was a case for it.

I haven’t before put these moments together, but it is very clear that the original “Great Witness” experience was a fundamental lesson that has been instrumental many times over the years. What I was being taught on that afternoon came to play in my efforts in the downtown SF pilgrimage. And I have probably over years honed this practice of intense focus coupled with extreme detachment to be able to find myself in that expanded space.

Review And Renewal For The Coming Anniversary

 In the impending twentieth anniversary of my automatic drawing, a specific moment very memorable it being so provocative, I am reviewing old journals and revising old ideas in order to comply a compendium of works and thought. It is also proving to be a reinvestment in my work for going forward.

As expected, there are things I remember contemplating and many things I don’t. There are things I recall writing about soon after which I could not touch on what they specifically referred to, the notions being so elusive. Some provocative experiences that I recall I see no mention of. I am seeing that many of my main motivating ideas over the years were clearly delineated in the earliest writings. As time goes on the ideas become more rarified, which require much rereading to figure what I was getting at. However what I am mostly uncovering is the development of a systemic methodology towards furthering the ecstatic response and the art that was all inclusive to it.

The entries fit into into a few basic categories, descriptions of the ecstatic experiences, methods that I developed to further go into such experiences, ideas around what ecstatic art could mean and how to incorporate those idea thematically into the work, along with ideas of general composition and a catalog of other poetic ideas and spontaneous visual imagery.

The first few months of doing this drawing were very intense. There were many unusual experiences and an endless flurry of thoughts. As this was not an artistic exercise towards any goal, rather a spontaneous but repeatable occurrence, it lived in a completely empty context. All previous notions around art making; source, meaning, metaphor and so on, were pulled into question by this void. And the intensity of the recurring ecstatic experiences challenged my internalized concepts of the nature of cognitive makeup through stark contrast. I was transfixed in this for several months, and recall that at one point making a decision to actively settle myself. I found an entry “30/3/03 This below zero temperature and lack of gravity is getting to me, I think I’ll come back down.”

The methodology for the work is non-linear due to the nature of the ecstatic experience, as delineated variously in the notes, specifically it being non-intentional. Because this draws so much attention to awareness of an internal landscape, it entails a dissonance when trying to apply a more objectified and analytical view to it, showing such to be non-functional to the internal inquiry. The furtherance of the ecstatic experience and the pictures that were being created through it could not stand separate in an artistic investigation nor creative statement, as a subject-object linear relationship was rendered inoperable to the task. It was something I had to actively let go of to go forward.

There is a phrase mentioned several times in the earlier journals, but one I do not actually recall, “direct metaphor”. This is about the notion I mention above. It implies a direct connection of the internal movement to the activity of the drawing and the resultant image. It also implies a lack of any intermediary interpreter of the work, even if that is a personal contemplation or conceptualization. The drawing is part of the experience as it also depicts the experience.

Viewing the artwork was also part of the ecstatic creative process. Even early on I found looking into the work would elicit an ecstatic response. This means that a measured look into the work would yield the automatic response for the creation of the work.  This became more and more pronounced over the years. And this further integrated and supported a subjective non-linear approach, where the process and results were indistinguishable. Again in the notion of this being a spontaneous action without intention, there was no reason to assume the image/object was the intended result of this automatic approach to art making. The idea of a specific intended outcome would lead to the “objective dissonance” mentioned before and block deeper investigation.

Now that I have established the non-linear characteristic of this process I need to go more into the elicitation of the ecstatic response and experience. Because even though I could only honestly view the work as non-linear, I have to write linearly. It is a systemically integrated approach which I unfortunately have to delineate bit by bit.

At the beginning, just poising the pen above the paper would elicit an ecstatic automatic response. There was no logic to this, but it was undeniable. In an effort to focus on what it was that was transpiring I began to find and develop other elicitations, although this was slow to start. i would focus on how it felt in my body trying to see where it would arise. I would try to hold different positions and degrees of relaxation to aide it. And through the effort at focusing on what I was doing physically, on the art, and perhaps on what was happening cognitively, different ecstatic experiences would emerge - alterations of my sense of being, of place and of presence. I figured early on to not expect or desire these occurrences, as that would have caused too much distress. They still came anyway. And I think somehow there were remnant memories of these experiences that I could utilize though reflection, on my body, my emotions, my thoughts to find them again.

So I began to collect things I could focus on to elicit the response, locations in my body, certain phrases, some memories and emotions, and of course the viewing of the work. The collection began to grow, but oftimes a focal point would also cease to function. I have noted some of these in the journal, but I know so many have come and gone that never were catalogued, but that doesn’t matter. What is of importance is that this was a functional, although very subjective, approach to the investigation of the work.

I want to emphasize the subjective nature of this as being systemic, in that a perceptual division of body, emotion and thinking is not very distinct in the elicitation of the ecstatic experience nor in the experience that comes, to the degree it does. For instance I would get notions of parts of my body thinking. Or a mental image would have an external presence as well as a localized bodily quality. Or an analytical thought would come with an extreme emotional response. None of this is very logical, but it was all FUNCTIONAL! It enabled an ongoing discovery and experience to deepen. And that it was rather illogical was further support for maintaining an open and focused attention on the interior landscape, as what would show up might do so in a completely unexpected way. So in this non-linear subjective systemic process I evolved and grew into the art.

I know defining art so far from an object or an observable event is a challenge for many. But I have developed inside a void so no rules outside of it need be applied. And as I have seen, such an exercise of external definition is a detriment to the process, or at minimum a distraction. So for me the art is the process and result indistinguishable by necessity, with a circular metaphorical approach needing to be applied. In other words, I paint the painting as the painting paints me and as I paint the shifting environment. Even in performances where there is no material media involved, ink is still being moved.

Return Of The Street Ecstatic

I know that the proximity of other people is a stimuli for my ecstatic response. In the cloistering during the pandemic we all were removed from crowds. But in the summer of the first opening I went to an event at a local beer garden. It was the first gathering I had been to in months and just being in a congregation of folks, which I had avoided for so long, seemed to be like a dream to me.

At the venue i saw and interacted with many people I knew, sharing stories of what we had been doing during the shut down and thoughts on what  the future might hold for us. But I also began to notice that my ecstatic response was getting very much activated when passing through the crowd. It usually takes me focusing on a proven stimuli to garner an ecstatic response in myself, but sometimes, as in this moment, the response comes independently.

I decided to focus on it as I moved among the groups of people, feeling it rise in me, but trying to mitigate my involuntary movements to not draw too much attention to myself. As by course, it was very stimulating on a systemic level, physically, mentally and emotionally. i do not want to assert the occurrence of a concrete interaction as that goes outside the phenomenological logic of the ecstatic experience. However this experience of the presence of others felt very foundational and complex with a sense that I was being made aware of an immensely detailed connection.

What the ecstatic experience can show me, as it has many times before, is the contrast of it to the usual experience of daily life. I noticed the same on this occasion. I began to see how the usual ways of interacting - talking, the use of body language and such - felt as an adjunct to the much more profound presence I was also experiencing, seeing the usual way of connecting and communication as subordinate to a fuller presence and interaction, even though this usual experience is considered the paramount of personal exchange.  I could see it as narrowly defined and limited based on social structuring, a veneer to a deeper interaction that no engagement in conversation would be able to give awareness to. All the words and ideas were at best distractions to what was more fully transpiring.

After this I decided to return to venturing into public as a street ecstatic. I have done this as artistic performance and thought it important to do as I was the only person I knew of who was engaging like this. However I was now considering it more as an exercise just to reenter into this profound experience of the presence of those surrounding me. It is a way to bring it forward and eschew the normal daily life experience, which felt so constrained in contrast. The question of it being an art performance was not as important. Just realizing and honoring this rare and profound level of experience would give the exercise importance.

Some time later on I went out to the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park to engage my ecstatic behavior in public. Although I didn’t get into any close proximity with anyone, I used the presence of others as stimuli and found the ecstatic response as by course. Some outings I may find a very pronounced response, and others less so. The exercise is about doing the best I can during that time to elicit the response. As usual people pretty much ignored me. But still I could feel the profundity of their presence within me when paying attention to those around me.

After some time of engaging on the Concourse I started to make my way out of the park. On my path I came close to and passed a group of people waiting in line to enter the Tea Garden. Although I wasn’t expressly focusing on the people at that moment, just their close proximity had the ecstatic response rise inside me. It was a wave of heightened intensity, and with widening eyes I made an effort to suppress my involuntary movements as I was passing so very close to people. This last unexpected reaction was another confirmation of the objectivity of ecstatic experience. It rises above the threshold of subjective illusion, surprising me with its occurrence and showing the actuality of its existence.