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.
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