Ecstatic Art vs Improvised Art

I recently was asked to give a talk. In the talk I decided to explain the difference between what I do in making art through an ecstatic response and artistic improvisation. This contrast is informative towards understanding what the ecstatic approach consist of, as it is very distant from other forms of art making.

To start I think it is good to explain that when I started doing ecstatic automatic drawing I had no word such as ecstatic to describe it. The automatic drawing just started happening. This definition I found much later on. This is pertinent as there was no a priori notion that ecstatic art was something to pursue.

The nature of ecstatic art is that the ecstatic response is followed and let to unfold. My concentration is more on my body and less on the formation of the image. Certainly I concentrate on the image, but more so as a way to elicit the ecstatic response. The image that comes is generated, not composed. I have learned not interfere with the process of the image's unfolding, a discipline that took a great deal of patience and relinquishing. My focus is on eliciting the ecstatic response. I let the image take care of itself.

Having been trained as a jazz musician I have a solid understand of improvisation. And what is different in this from the ecstatic automatic approach is that in improvisation I am very focused of the form I am working with. Improvisation consists of engaging and responding to form though cultivating an intuitive and immediate response to the form. There is a starting point of some sort, a seed or such, that is extrapolated upon. As the work grows the artist responds to the form that is evolving in an effort to further cultivate the work. Sometimes a mental image forms that the artist conveys and other times the response comes more instantly or extemporaneously. But it is still an engagement with the form.

Good improvisors can take and create through many types of form, whether in art, music, literature or otherwise. In fact almost all composition is related to improvisation, even if the final result is codified and repeatedly performed. This however is just not possible in the ecstatic approach. There is no formal seed, all comes completely spontaneously. Certainly there is a form that comes, but this is a form that is generated by the nature of the process. I find it to be very consistent in its own way. It does not vary due to any thoughts of ideas or reflections I may have about it.

I stress this point because I think this is difficult for people to infer. Many suggest I should look at such and such art work, listen to such and such music, focus in such and such a way. But in the face of the process that transpires this is just meaningless, because there is no way to interject this into the making of the art. This may seem radical to some people, somehow outside of their conception of how art is made, or even outside of their notion of  human behavior. But I have been doing this for long enough to be comfortable with the way it comes forth. The forms that come are like the natural forms of the blowing wind, the flowing of water and the crystallization of ice. The wind doesn't improvise, and neither do I when doing ecstatic art. The forms are intrinsic. They are revealed as a part of, as well as a result of, the process.

Ecstatic Scrolls

Being at the point of ten years from discovering my ability to draw automatically, on reflection of that time I find a desire to return to the very direct way of making my art as it was in the early days. At the time there was as much of the fervor to understand the process flowing through me as there was to make interesting images. In fact the latter was more challenging as I was at the mercy of the spontaneous movement to make images. I had to work within the process to remain authentic and to not circumnavigate a discovery of deeper possibilities. 

In that end though I have worked much on producing interesting images, trying and fabricating different different types of marking tools, using various substances as my paint and various supports to paint upon. More recently I began to include imagery in my work as the time was appropriate in my evolution to do so while still holding to an automatic ecstatic approach when applying paint. All this led to composition based on what I thought abut the experience of ecstatic movement and ecstatic perception.  Although I have many works that are more of a color composition, the works that incorporate a concept or theme are the more appealing to me. And I see this is an attempt to communicate something, or even offer an experience.

However my own experience is what is the most provocative. I do not know how to communicate this or offer it up, although I seem to be trying to do so in these compositions. I can truly change my surroundings and my sense of self by a pointed surrender of my perception. I have some talent as an ecstatic. And in a most forward thinking way I assert my art to exist in this experiential enhancement to my perception - I paint the entirety of my experience. I think it possible my images offer this, to others as it does for me, but I have been doing it for ten years. The effort is individual, even if the discovery may be universal.

So I think back to that time and am compelled to return to a more direct approach, and to a more direct inquiry. To that end I am working on scrolls, what I have thought of long ago but am doing now. Basically I paint with brush and ink one section at  time. I now have finished two scrolls, each about one hundred feet of a continuous and spontaneous drawing. And although there are conceptual aspects to this work and the product it is, I take it as an effort to refine my process. That is to reduce it to most essential, eschewing other artistic distractions, that I may better focus on looking into what I have been in training see. If the seeing is the essence of the art, then this is really all I need.

Night Visions In Phosphene Hues

I have recently completed five works in a series which I call Night Visions In Phosphene Hues. What these works are is an attempt to incorporate three different aspects of subjectivity into a work of art, thereby having it be a model of a certain subjective experiences. I will explain.

I have a vivid visual imagination. Images are continually being offered to me through my intuition. This is most obvious when I am at rest or in bed. I call these night visions. I see all sorts of images passing through my mind's eye, art works, graphic images, strange scenes and settings and abstract markings and symbols. It is a skill I have worked on. Sometimes I keep track of the images I see, but mostly I just forget them. There is too much to catalog and not much proof of the use to do so. 

However, from the collection of images I have made I picked five which seem to have the most relation to a spiritual theme, as I interpret them. These I designed in outline which I reproduced in twine to be used as a rubbing as is one of my procedures in composition. Then I selected colors based on phosphenes in a specific degree of light. Phosphenes are the color fields you see when you close you eyes. In different light there are different groups of colors, so I made five different color palettes. 

These two, intuitive images and phosphate colors, are two aspects of subjective experience. By subjective I mean truly from one's point of experience. These experiences cannot be shared, reproduced or imitated. Maybe no experiences can be, but these obviously cannot be included with those we think can, whether erroneously or not. I see this as an important distinction to make.

There is also something I have intuitively realized in the relation of these two aspects of subjectivity, that phosphenes and intuitional mental images enhance and foster each other, (although I believe for most of us it is very difficult to focus on both simultaneously, not without a bit of practice.) What I mean is the swirl of color in one's eyes is a stimulus for free association and conversely an intuitive image (or dream image) can form back into a color shadow of the phosphene. I have certainly experienced the latter, so I have some confirmation in my own observations. I have recently been reading about various stages of imagery in regards to lucid dreaming that pass through phosphene to full formed dreaming (hypnogogic imagery) and levels of visions through shapes and patterns to entire scenes (entopic imagery and form constants), so I am happy to know my intuitive insight has some other confirmation as well.  

The third aspect of subjectivity in the work is the ecstatic manner in which the color fields are applied. Now a color field from my ecstatic application (with the appropriate tool) very much has the grainy and entropic flow of the phosphene. Whether this relation is actual or just representative I cannot say, although it may have a basis in brownian motion or some other such physical structure. Regardless, it is a fair representation of the view of a phosphene color field. Beyond this there is the possibility that the marks themselves as a document of the ecstatic experience contain a signature of the experience that can be passed to the viewer. This I cannot know for sure, but certainly many of my works show an incredible level of depth or movement for almost all viewers, and a major stimulus for me towards the ecstatic experience, though it is my body of work.

The final works show an intuitive image emerging out of a color field generated by an ecstatic approach that is representative of the phosphene in form and color. It is a model of these subjective processes, resulting from the processes themselves, incorporating themes of spiritual inquiry. Essentially it is pointing to what is truly unique in an individual - a subjectivity that cannot shared, reproduced or imitated, since it is truly unique. My hope is that this work will bring this aspect of being into greater focus and make it less likely to be overlooked by concerns of an objectivity that usually gets the majority of our attention.

The Secret Culmination of "tiny eyes making sacred"

I am going to write about the final part of my piece "tiny eyes making sacred". This was a movement piece I did for the Art in Nature/Nature of Art Festival held at the Redwood Regional Park in Oakland CA. What this describes is not something I planned, but certainly a part of the piece as my art is based in the experiential, courting the transformations that will occur there.

What is here described is something that I did not speak about afterwards to others, excepting two trusted individuals, the experience being so radical, intense and personally profound. Why I publish it now on my blog I do not know, perhaps to expose the climax of the piece, or to reconcile with it and to integrate it, forming back for the present. And perhaps knowing the nature of blogs it will still be as a secret, except if you are reading now.

The piece was a demonstration of the fundamentals of the act of sacred making, which is a manipulation of the environment coupled with an altered ecstatic experience that leaves a physical indication of the interaction. There is an account of the piece from my tiny eyes website, which is probably worth a look before reading on here. http://tinyeyes.bretarenson.com/tinyeyesmakingsacred.html

What I am going to describe is my experience on the final journey alone up the trail past the festival grounds to end the piece.

A major part of the piece was to court and cultivate a transformed experience of the environment. This is something that can be very pronounced for me but difficult to explain. Suffice to say there is a major shift in the way I relate to my surroundings. I say I court because I do not always find the level I sometimes do, so courting aptly describes the nature of my activity.

For this piece it was of course my hope to find such a moment or moments, and although there were definitely heightened passages, there was nothing on the order of shattering up to the time when I was to leave the populated festival grounds and alone back up the forest trail. Before I turned to leave grounds though I made a last effort to see the great shift. But alas it was not to be found, so I turned up the trail alone, and began the last part of the piece.

Entering into the forest trail alone, I had feeling of sadness come to me, and the feeling began to grow stronger and stronger. It was like I was walking though a passage to reunion, but which was also passage into losing my separateness. It was like the opposite of a birth canal. It felt like I was walking into death. But as is my directive, I kept surrendering to the experience, because it was there.

After several steps more the deathly feeling of reunion started to open up, and I began to more acutely sense my surroundings. I began to experience deep within me a kind of communication, a movement that is very intense that cuts all through me. It is something I can only listen to through the most intimate part of me, it coming to a place so deep within. And it reverberates from that exposed part through the rest of me. And as such it is a challenge to a keep focus and not try to hide.

The communication was to the effect of "YOU DID IT!, YOU DID IT!". It welled up through out my body and tears came to my eyes. My usual response to an ecstatic experience is to say "thank you". It helps to keep my focus. But when I tried this time my gratitude was not accepted. It was an adamant "NO - THANK YOU!" and that was final. It was not accepted. I had to take everything in. From somewhere I was getting acknowledgment, praise and gratitude for doing what was the intention of the piece, for making sacred, from what felt like hosts and hosts.

I am not going to say anything about the existence of the divine or the spiritual or what have you, nor do I care. But I do believe in the divine experience. This I know something about and is real. And in this experience of rapture I began to weep profusely, wailing as I walked up the path. As extraordinary of an experience as this is it is also rather uncomfortable. But as my attention to intimate relation was part of the piece, I kept turning back to it, and allowing it to keep passing through me, making me weep and wail. I would repeat the words of the piece, "tiny eyes making sacred" which would toss me back into the depth of the experience.

A couple of times others would come pass down the trail, and I gave myself a moment of letting go of the focus, not really wanting to have anyone engage me, which I am guessing, or was just apprehensive, that they surely would. But as they passed I would speak the words again.

It was a bit of a trek to get to back to the starting point. But I was committed to stay with the experience through out it, as was the frame work of the piece. On returning to the spot I finally could let it go, sitting for a while so settle back into a more usual experience of the world.

And now this is published, the telling of the culmination of the piece.

About 3rd Level Holding Pattern

I wrote this short essay for a show I am currently in called The Elements. It explains some of the background of the included piece, "3rd Level Holding Pattern", displayed just below.

"My work is all done spontaneously. It is more generated than composed. It comes from an automatic ecstatic response which I follow and which diminishes my sense of participation. Because of this I essentially am not trying to get a specific pictorial placement or effect. It is not really possible. It is so much less intentional of an involvement.

I asked myself, "If I am not painting a picture per se, what am I doing?" At the base I am interacting with materials, doing so in an ecstatic state. The ecstatic experience yields a transformation of perception, radically so. And here the experience is inextricably tied with the material.
Through contemplation of this relationship I had this insight, "All art is the reenactment of the transformative interaction of material." And even though by this statement any art making cannot escape this, I decided to make it a central theme to my work, thereby opening the possibility of making the most reductive and yet complete work possible.

The materials used in this piece are very simple, a pile of decaying leaves and sticks and bark around a storm drain that I collected in the parking lot of my studio and which had the patina of automotive oil and exhaust dust, mixed into a bucket of acrylic modeling paste. I painted with this mixture with my automatic ecstatic approach, letting it dry between many applications of substance. I continued until the mixture was all transferred to the surface of the work. The end was a piece with a great amount of relief and detail.

My work has a certain signature pattern. Again this is not something I devised but have discovered. And what I have also discovered is that this pattern, upon contemplation, will yield an ecstatic response. Perhaps this pattern exists as a fractal in all forms of matter, but it gets a clearer exposure in my work. It is displayed in this piece on a three dimensional level despite it being monotone, which makes it a unique work being psychedelic without the usage of bright color or form.

The transformation of the material goes to the transformation of perception. The relation of material and perception is contemplated, bringing an inquiry to the nature of their distinction and union, a cosmology of the most essential order."

Pilgrimage

I have of late been going out to downtown SF to do my ecstatic movement in the streets. I see it as a journey to see again the transformation about me that grace allows me at varying degrees. I call it a pilgrimage.

The idea was based on issues of defining a frame of presentation for what I do. As it is basically continuous and spontaneous it resists programmation. I decided to just do what I do in the context of a social space, an ecstatic in the flow of public concourse.

My basic trajectory is to walk in the most compelling direction through an act of surrender. This will often take me in circles, but this is not the point. Often I will stop suddenly as spontaneous movements emerge. This can get very intense as I allow it to move me as it will. I continue until they subside, and then look for another direction to begin walking again. I remind myself to move and see in a context of surrender.

I focus on the people around me as this is the greatest stimulus. I have positioned myself amongst the flow of pedestrians crossing the street, focusing on them as they come. I find myself awash in a river of people, from each I recognize something, like a ring of a bell, which energizes me. This is a very heady to experience.

The most consistent response from the public though is ignoring and avoiding me. People's faces are well guarded, to which it is easy to respond in like. But as one of my directives is to turn away from compulsions of self protection I once looked more deeply and saw their faces transform into amazing masks, each spilling over with their own particular wonderful rigid beauty.

One time at the corner of Market and Montgomery the environment suddenly shifted and I saw what I can only describe as heaven on earth. I began to weep openly, and the repetition of the words in my mind "heaven on earth" reinitiated the experience during several minutes. Nothing had changed visually, I was just seeing heaven on earth, as the tears rolled down my cheeks for all to see.

Now although I am behaving as a crazy person might, jumping about randomly, and although there is some apprehension in exposing myself this way in public, the far greater apprehension is in the anticipation of exposure to the expansive. My process is inclusive of the people, they become like ink to me, they are part of the whole. But the unfathomable intimacy in the transformation that I may experience exposes me to an extremely vulnerable level. What I may perceive is quite a lot to take in and will rend me, crack away at my identity. And it seems to me that I am being perceived just as deeply as I am perceiving, maybe even more so. And this is the goal. So when this is happening, the fact that it is happening in public space just doesn't hold any concern any more.

This is my art. I have a uniform I wear every time, white shirt, black pants, white shoes, with my blue metal water bottle on my belt. Also a small feather in my hair, as a headdress is essential. I take only what I will need to be there and make art. Maybe I will add some objects, things I have used in other events, but for now this is the setting. My art is in being an ecstatic in a public venue and bringing about the transformed experiences that grace will allow me through my efforts of surrender. I will be on pilgrimage making art again soon.

Stimuli to Response: Counter Intuitive Intuition

As an addendum to my previous post I would like to explain the relation of stimuli to the response in the ecstatic experience. What arises in the experience is not usually associated to how I elicit it. I have learned what works over the years and often this would seem very specific to me. It is an empirical approach, not a logical one.

For instance, it may arise that I experience an overwhelming feeling of love to and from me of an order which is not usually known or accessible to me. But this is not achieved by honing or trying to augment my sense of love through focus, meditation, chant or prayer on love. I may find this by relaxing my sacrum area, surrendering to the spontaneous movement that arises, and visually focusing on all that is about me. It will arise as if on it's own, not by efforts to form it.

Other stimuli I use seem purely functional and specific to me, such as looking into or poking a stick into a cup or bowl. This can even work when I see someone else poke a stick into a vessel. Fortunately for me these objects and actions have a great amount of metaphorical associative possibilities which I can use thematically, but this isn't why it works. Rather it is because this is the action of me dunking an ink pen into an ink well, which is an action associated with drawing, and some how the focus I put on automatic drawing to elicit a response got transferred to the dunking of the pen, as these actions are always consecutive.

Although some may use the power of a symbol to focus and open an experience on what the symbol represents, this is by no means the sole way, or even a completely efficient way. A focus on a symbol can entice many levels of the psyche; conceptual, sentimental, ego identification, which can distract from an awareness of the ecstatic and expansive. In my experience when a stronger ecstatic response comes it is pretty shattering to my sense of self. That love may be more bewildering than comforting, even disorienting. It is a qualitatively different experience. I do not see the bridge between them.

In this the sense of cause and effect does not hold for me. It is more practice/surrender leading to grace by grace. Joseph Campbell said that some spiritual traditions are there to protect the user from spiritual experiences, and I know how and where in my being some spiritual actions and practices affect me, which I can see are distractions. I do sometimes find stimulating words that I can use to elicit the response, but they have come directly from the ecstatic experience. I have learned them, not devised them. It is a path of intuition, but intuition that has proven itself.