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.