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.