The Muse Of The Physical

An essential part of my approach is a moment of complete relaxation each time before I mark. This allows me to be sure the automatic movement that comes is authentic, that it is not an imitation of an idea of the movement. I sometimes forget this in my eagerness to do the work, but when I make sure I take a moment of rest in front of the art, I am again surprised by the vehemence and suddenness of the onset of the spontaneous movement.

Although I have been doing this for years, I recently made the association of that moment of emptiness being very similar to when a composer or writer purposefully releases all thought to allow more quiet and hopefully more profound voices to come through. This quiet passive listening is a technique surely used over the ages. It is a way to cultivate inspiration and connection to “The Muses”, an anthropomorphization of that shrouded internal space from whence ideas emerge.

Most artists have done this in finding intriguing images, words, musical passages. as have I. In this case what emerges are ideas and mental images. It is a mental notion of which the artist will take note, transcribe and emulate as best they can. However for me what emerges is not mental, it is physical.

This seems an obvious association but perhaps why the thought has not been so prominent with me is the concept that the body and mind are so divergent. And the judgement that we can safely be witnesses to the free flowing movement of the mind, where as spontaneous movements within our body represents a suspicious loss of control. However this flowing movement of the mind we can also observe as spontaneous and really beyond our knowing input, hence the concept of “The Muses” as an outside influence.

It seems a radical interpretation, but describing my spontaneous movements as physical inspiration may more be about challenging the concept of the separation of mind and body. Outside of this concept, the association seems apparent, and I believe in many cultures such a demonstration of physical inspiration would not be in question.

I am thinking this could be a very suitable description of what I do, and the association of psychological inspiration to physical inspiration at the creative level seems very clear to follow. Although I do not interpret mental imagery or work from any such emulation, physical inspiration is the muse from which comes the imagery I make.

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.

Fluxations In Static Blue

Here is the gallery write up for an immense immersive ambient work I created entitled Fluxations In Static Blue for the gallery space.

The idea of this immersive installation is to allow the viewer to become fully enveloped by the detail and texture within the markings of the artwork. The complex interaction of lines will act to stimulate the viewer, who may then begin to experience the movement of the piece. Of course this movement is movement within the viewer being stimulated, the act of observing being dynamic. Further this allows the viewer to begin to observe the complexity of activity happening in the perception of themselves and their surroundings, which is far more complex and detailed than one is usually aware of. Becoming aware of this immense complexity is the basis of an ecstatic response.

It is akin to a shift of view point, seeing what is not usually noticed in a habitual setting, or more so, to an opening of a vista. It is analogous to when urban dwellers visit remote settings and find a night sky filled with complex and detailed textures of an immense multitude of stars. This shift in vista can be awe inspiring, even disturbing, seeing revealed what is always there but what has not been habituated to as the usual environment. One may feel displaced, that they are elsewhere, even while knowing the setting to be the same.

This is the nature of "standing outside" in the classical definition of ecstasy. And when this happens to the personal sense of self, beginning to find the complexity of perception and activity of self, the opening vista feels again as one standing outside, or even as other, as this shifted sense of self contrasts greatly to the usual sense of self to which one has been habituated.

 

What is Ecstatic Automatism?

All the marks I apply to my art are done through a process best described as Ecstatic Automatism. It is a process of repeatedly and continuously stimulating an automatic ecstatic reflex. This results in an explosive and rapid movement of mark making on the working surface. The image is generated rather than constructed, with me standing outside of the composition.

This ecstatic response is also stimulated within me by viewing the results of my work. This is one of the guides to completing a work, the degree which the image stimulates the ecstatic experience within me. I have seen this response in other viewers at various levels. Hopefully the image holds the same potential to stimulate a degree of ecstatic response for everyone who experiences it as well.

Skull Painting Series

Here is something I shared on an online forum about work I have been doing.

I have been putting in time at my studio after long periods of absence. My method is most succinctly described as ecstatic automatism. It can also be explained as exciting the kundalini, because the kundalini model fits well, although I don’t often use that term. I have been working on my skull series. Though my application of paint is automatic the imagery in the work is made through stencils on top of the canvas or as rubbings from a relief below the canvas.

The artistic endeavor is both a practice in image making as well in cultivating an ecstatic response. On an initial level I can excite the movement in my body to draw and paint, and this is simple enough and what I have been doing mostly on my return to the studio. However, when I remember this is a double faceted endeavor, I work to put my attention on my body and the flow of the movement inside of it. Then my head goes light, sensations ripple through my body, I start to take quick breaths (breath of fire) and emit various utterances, and my perception starts to shift and grow. 

I know why I neglect this focus, because it is a challenge to have so much attention on the art making as well as cultivating the internal shifts. They do not necessarily support each other (they can support each other, but that takes a higher level of concentration to find.) But this integration, in practice and in result, is the apparent goal in my art.

The symbol of the skull is common and deep in culture. One of the reasons I picked it. Also because I did a series on diagrams of the human heart, and this is a contrast to that series. But it isn’t a skull that I am intending to depict, but rather the concept of it, enmeshed and emerging from a less formed color field of ecstatic markings, rather how thoughts emerge from nebulous areas of the consciousness, if you have ever looked to see how this transpires.

To me the ecstatic state is one of reduction and requires detachment and surrender to find. Although the experience is heady, it requires and yields more levels of stripping away. To me the skulls are also symbols of this, as they are used in Tibetan spiritual art depicting the act of removal from the senses, and perhaps the state of cessation or ego death, which is a part of the enlightenment that is sought. But again my skull images are also symbols of the idea of death. In teachings of realization it is purported that the experience of life is illusory, which of course includes death. So in my own clumsy terms, being realized requires passing through death to discover that death does not exist. This is quite a paradox with deep comic/tragic implications. Especially in that very few, regardless of their efforts, will find realization to know this as such. (I wonder what the algebraic computations are of the above equation coupled with tragedy + time = comedy.) The working title of the series is “Your Idea of Death Never Had a Life”. I also imagine it as depicting the conception of death existing in different individuals.

This is an example of my artistic way to integrate these ideas about the ecstatic experience into what I do as an ecstatic progenitor. And so it really makes more sense if I keep my attention on the flow of my internal ecstatic response while I paint. It is an integrative work. So I am going to push to keep this attention up.

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.