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.